


Wash Them In Milk, Dress Them in Silk

by verbaepulchellae



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Political Marriage, Post Season 3 AU, Pregnancy, Seriously I can't stress enough how angst riddled this is, Smut, Trauma, canon AU, some background Becho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-11-04 00:53:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17888432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbaepulchellae/pseuds/verbaepulchellae
Summary: “We’ve tried everything,” Clarke explodes. “Don’t you get it? The only way Arkadia survives now is if this marriage happens.”“It’s archaic,” Bellamy growls and it makes Clarke’s eyes snap.“Yeah, maybe it is. But it’s all we’ve got.”__________________________Peace has lasted two years, yet on the verge of a war in which they're hopelessly outmatched, Arkadia’s only chance of survival is a Marriage of Alliance between King Roan of Azgeda and Wanheda.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t have much to say about this other than it’s been bugging me for three months and I finally decided to write it. The title is from an old children’s rhyme. 
> 
> Takes place three years after season 3, with no nuclear apocalypse.

Jasper is the first killed in the skirmishes. 

He’d been better, or getting better anyway. He wasn’t picking fights anymore, not with his own people at least, but he’d always had a fools streak in him. It’s quick: an arrow through an eye, and despite all his luck, Jasper can’t survive that.

The problem is, it happens where no one’s clear of if he was on the boundary line or not. And even if he was, their relationship with Azgeda should have been good enough to warrant at least a warning shot.

Blame falls on a cohort of young soldiers, who had been radicalized and blooded as children late in Queen Nia’s rule. Apparently they’re dealt with personally by the Head of Roan’s Private Guard and their bodies are strung up along the boundary line as a warning (for who, it’s not quite clear). But news of the executions doesn’t reach Arkadia until a small retaliatory group takes off. They don’t see Azgeda’s message, but they do find a group of Azgedan children who have dared each other closer and closer to the boundary line.

The official story is that only one of the Skaikru soldiers, O’Brien, opened fire- that he had liked Jasper as a drinking buddy and that he himself had put away at least a few drinks after they had left camp. He’s executed out by the tool shed, sober and shaking. It doesn’t take away from the fact that three kids are dead, all shot in the back.

A messenger is sent from Roan. She’s one Skaikru does not recognize, her face chalked bone white, wreathed in a crown of bones. She refuses their traditional hospitality, refuses even to come in the gates. She stays just long enough to deliver her message to the representatives of the Council before she turns her horse and whips it to break neck speed back toward the treeline. 

“What did it say?” Clarke asks, leaning against the door of the barracks as Bellamy shrugs off the black guard jacket. The golden insignia that marks him out as Captain briefly catches the light. 

“About what you’d expect,” he says grimly. He scrubs a hand through his hair and glances at his friend, her blonde hair twisted back into a low bun, her fingers dirtied from helping to dig the shallow grave for O’Brien. There’s a swath of dried blood on her pants leg. Clarke’s jaw is set too firmly, and Bellamy knows she’s trying to forget the weight of O’Brien’s limp body, trying to push down the nausea he had hoped they had left behind in the past with the bloodshed and horror of their first year on Earth. They must both smell like death.

“Ceasefire is off.”

“No.”

He grimaces and shrugs, pulling on his off duty shirt. 

“Bellamy, the end of a ceasefire is everything but a declaration of war.”

“You don’t have to fucking tell me that,” he snaps and slams his locker door closed. “That’s what I tried to tell the Council.”

“Please tell me they listened.”

He gives her a long look. “Arlight: They listened.”

It’s not funny but a smile touches Clarke’s mouth all the same. “Liar.”

Bellamy pulls on his spare canvas jacket and tosses Clarke a small tin from it’s pocket. She catches it and smiles again. She takes a leaf of the dried mint she’d gifted him a month back and tucks it under her tongue. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“So what did they actually say?”

“You won’t like it.”

“That’s a given.”

Bellamy snorts. “They’re saying we continue with business as usual. Shunji thinks it’ll blow over. Pandi thinks we’re better off without the ceasefire and alliance anyway.”

“Oh my god,” Clarke murmurs. “We’re all going to die. What’s the point of your fucking promotion if they don’t listen to you?”

Bellamy claps a hand to her shoulder. “Giving me more responsibilities and less time to hang out with trouble makers like you.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she says darkly. She checks her dad’s old watch, ever firmly in place on her wrist and sighs. “My shifts starting. I’ll see you at dinner tonight?”

“I’ll save you a plate,” Bellamy promises and Clarke gives him a wane smile before she turns and walks alone through the busy hubbub of Arkadia toward the clinic. 

“Save some lives,” he calls after her. He gets a middle finger in response which is better than nothing. 

For a week, it seems like Councilor Shunji might be right. There is a stillness that lasts just long enough for the breath that Arkadia seemed to hold eases. Then, like a drawn bow released, the Northernmost farms are burning.

It’s been a hard year, a drought halving the harvest from their Eastern land and with the loss of their corn, the slowly depleting stores of grain in the silo suddenly look more than half empty rather than half full. 

Two days later, half the hunting party that’s sent out doesn’t return, and those that do bring stories of white faced killers, decked out in bone.

All further hunting parties are ordered to bring armed guards. A day, three, time is hard to track, later, a patrol comes back with an Azgedan head on a pike, but two of their own party are missing.There a blood thirsty energy that roils through Arkadia that night: murderous and sticky so that people stay up too late and drink too much. 

The council convenes and reconvenes. A messager is sent to Azgeda. The messenger returns, without having been granted access to the Ice Nation capitol. The council convenes again. A group of Arkadians breaks into the armory and steals guns, supposedly planning on marching to Azgeda themselves. Bellamy has to put down the near riot, and gets a deep cut in his arm for his efforts.

“How are we back here?” Clarke asks, voice tight as she sutures the wound. “It’s been two years of peace, Bellamy. How did we lose all that in a month?’

“Earth isn’t used to peace,” is all Bellamy can say. He’s exhausted, hasn’t been in on regular council meeting since Pike’s three years back, but in the last week has been asked to attend four. His head hurts with the talk of death: of gun and ammo inventories, of knowledge of the land- ravines and gullies, mountains and hillsides. Of how and when and where he thinks Azgeda is most likely to attack again. Of how to control their own people in the midst of this, something they seem to have lost the ability to do since getting to Earth.

“What does the Council think?”

Clarke’s not been asked to any council meetings yet and they both know why. In the years since the City of Light, since the fall of Mount Weather, the ‘krus look to Clarke as the power of Arkadia, an inconvenience for the Council, given that she’s been known to publicly disagree and undermine them on several occasions. That, on those occasions, she’s been the only reason their peace has continued and lasted this long the council knows, but Bellamy thinks they’d sooner resign than acknowledge.

Clarke Griffin at twenty years old is a nightmare for people who had built lifelong political careers that have become nearly useless on the ground. Clarke doesn’t want power, she just wants what’s best for their people, but try telling that to the Council.

“The Council thinks that Trikru will ally with us,” Bellamy says with a sigh.

“Trikru only just got their new trading post with Azgeda,” Clarke says, shaking her head and staring down at a map. “They won’t risk that.”

“Well, the Council thinks our kru ties are strong enough.”

“What, two years of allyship over a trading post they’ve been wanting for the last fifty?” Clarke scoffs. “Come on…”

“I didn’t say I agreed with them,” Bellamy growls back, wincing at a sharp jab of Clarke’s needle. “I’m telling you what they’re saying.”

“They’re idiots, all of them, if they think we’ll actually win if this comes to war. Trikru won’t fight, they’ve worked too hard and long for their own peace. We’ll lose all of this.”

She gestures helplessly around them to the small clinic office, but Bellamy knows what she means. Arkadia has grown slowly. They’re a long way off from being self sufficient, but they’ve made progress. They’re trading with three krus now, they’ve put down roots and started their own farms. Slowly, their people are learning how to till the land and work the soil and learn what it’s like to live and grow on Earth, not just survive. But a war with Azgeda now will be the end of that, they both know it. 

“You’ve got a better idea?” Bellamy asks, rubbing a hand across his face. Clarke looks up at him for the first time, wisps of her blonde hair framing her face. “Have we ever found a way to settle things without people dying?”

“We did.”

“That was after the City of Light, Clarke. The number of people every kru lost was equal to what they would have lost in a fight. Back then, we had to think of other ways to settle things. But soldiers get bored, leaders need ways to keep their people in line, you know that.”

“You still think Jasper was killed on purpose.”

Bellamy shakes his head, frustrated and too tired to match Clarke in her warp speed connections. “Whether I do or not, that’s not what I’m saying right now.”

“Good,” she snaps. “So don’t insinuate it, especially where you could be overheard.”

“Who’s going to overhear me here?” He bites out. She just glares at him.

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, reigning in his own temper. “If you could try to remember I’m not the one who’s locked you out of the Council-”

“I’m not trying to pick a fight,” Clarke snaps, frustration in every line. Bellamy wonders when the last time she slept was. “I’m trying to find a way out of one. If they would just fucking-” she bites off whatever the rest of that sentence is and shakes her head. She finishes the stitches and ties them off silently.

They’re a toe away from taking out their frustration and exhaustion on each other, and that’s never been in anyone’s best interest. They’re getting better at it though, the older they get, the more they’ve learned to find the delicate balance between pushing each other and supporting each other, without tearing each other apart in the midst of it.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” she repeats evenly, carefully, as she puts down the needle and sits down on the cot next to him. “And I’m really glad you’re ok.” 

“I don’t want to fight either. And thanks. You always stitch me up.” Bellamy says, nudging her arm. It’s the closest he can get to gentleness right now.

“Well it would be a pretty shitty time to lose the Captain of the Guard, wouldn’t it?”

“Come on, you’d miss me. A little.”

“I’d miss you.” Clarke confirms. She lifts her chin at his bare bicep. “How’s that feel.”

“Stings but not too bad.”

“Arms not going to fall off?” 

“No,” he chuckles. “I think you’ve saved it.”

“Good.”

She leans into him and their shoulders touch in the quiet. It’s not much, but the simple connection allows them time to fall back into something a little less volatile. Bellamy closes his eyes and sits in the quiet, listens to her soft, even breaths. He could fall asleep here, sitting up.

“We should get some rest,” Clarke finally says softly. “Who knows when we’ll get another chance to.”

“You’re probably right.” 

She stands and looks at him for a long moment and then gives him a half smile. They both know tonight isn’t a night they’ll share a bed, but most nights aren’t, and that’s fine. “Goodnight, Bellamy.”

“Night, Clarke.”

There’s a tense hush for the next few days, so quiet that Bellamy almost wants to believe things will settle all on their own. But then a Skaikru trade delegation is attacked on their way to Shallow Valley. All the goods are burned, and the sole member of the delegation that isn’t hanged is fed a slow acting poison so that he dies, writhing in agony, short hours after he makes it back to Arkadia. 

It’s a genius move. Arkadia has already received and distributed the goods promised from Shallow Valley, some of which, like the thick sweaters made from the rare sheep that still lived in Shallow Valley, are fundamental in keeping their youngest and oldest people alive. Having already been late on this trade reciprocation, Skaikru’s debt deepens. The leader of Shallow Valley is regretful but firm when she informs Skaikru that they cannot send the promised provisions of wheat and preserved goods until Skaikru can make good on what they owe.

Every day seems to bring word of new, small skirmishes along the former border- one dead, three dead, two wounded- that slowly tally up to deplete the Skaikru population right where it hurts.

“We can’t survive this,” Clarke says, joining Bellamy at the top of the guard tower. She’s brought him up a canteen of hot tea and small pot of oatmeal. Bellamy finds dried fruit mixed in that Clarke must have taken from her own private stock, because they ran out of dried berries two days ago in the mess hall. They look out through the thick wire and fencing, across their young fields at the tree line, dark and shivering in the late autumn breeze. 

“Has the council gotten any closer to a solution?” She peers up at him, cheeks red from the cold, the gloves on her hands threadbare. 

“One that doesn’t kill a ton of people? No.” 

Clarke sighs and tucks her nose into the thick scarf that’s wrapped around her neck. “At this rate, we won’t just lose our soldiers. We’re going to lose the kids, and we’ll all have to go back to rationing.”

“We’ve survived worse,” Bellamy says dryly. “I’m sure that’s the rationale behind what the council is doing.”

“To their minds, sure. And we’ll survive, but it doesn’t need to happen like this. It needs to end. Roan is reasonable, we know that.”

Bellamy looks down at her trying to read her expression and thoughts in the profile of her face.

“You want to meet for peace talks.”

“Don’t you?”

Bellamy rolls his shoulders. His arms and back are sore from the new training regime the guard details are being put through. It’s rigourous, pointless training, trying to prepare them to go up against an army three times their size with weapons that won’t run out of ammo and extensive knowledge of the region, with nearly nonexistent preparation time. “It’s better than anything else we’re looking at at this point.”

She stays with him for a while longer, long enough to supervise his finishing of the food she’s brought him and for him to coax her into eating one of the dried strips of jerky the guard tower stocks for protein. He doesn’t like how pale she’s gotten. Then she leaves, the briefest smile flashed at him, nowhere close to the bright radiance he’s seen from her on late summer nights, but it’s something. 

It’s late when Bellamy gets off his shift, and not before more news comes in that four more are dead- two Azgeda warriors, two Skaikru. The halls are quieter than they should be, even at such a late hour. It’s like the tension and fear as settled across Arkadia like a feather stuffed blanket, muting everything and everyone. All Bellamy wants is to sleep and forget the last day and a half. His footsteps echo in the empty halls and he wonders if most everyone who hasn’t had to pull overtime is asleep until… there. A light is on under Clarke’s door and Bellamy hesitates and then knocks. 

She’s in her sleep clothes, hair down loose around her face and shoulders. She looks tired, deep circles under her eyes, but her face softens when she sees him. 

“Want some company?”

“Come on in.” 

Her room is warm and smells like her- soft and a little like crushed rosemary and mint, familiar. The gentle glow of her desk lamp washes her bare legs and arms a soft golden as she folds herself back into her desk chair, foot tucked up and knee bent against her chest so she can prop her chin on it.

He hangs his jacket up by the door and kicks off his boots because Clarke gets picky about cleanliness in her little room. There’s a book left open on her nightstand and he picks it up as she gets back to work on a charcoal drawing.

“This any good?”

“I like it. Did you ever take the literature elective back in school?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think we read something by the same author. Can you remember?”

Bellamy considers the faded name, _J.D. Salinger_ , and shakes his head. “Maybe. I couldn’t tell you.”

“Tell me what you think of it.” Clarke says. “Some of the way the main character talks makes me think of you.”

She doesn’t see the smile Bellamy tries to keep in check as he settles in an old armchair, so worn the original pattern is hardly distinguishable. He’s careful to mark her spot, because she gets cranky when she has to search for where she’s left off, and flips to the beginning. 

It’s a family drama, domestic and safe, and he gets through maybe twenty pages when he realizes the hypnotic scratch and whisper of Clarke’s charcoal in the background has stopped. He looks up to find her watching him, cheek resting on her knee, a fond, soft smile on her face.

“What do you think?”

“I like it. Have no idea what you mean about seeing me in it, though.”

“Right,” Clarke snorts.

He closes the book and holds it out to her and she carefully places it on her desk before she unfolds from the chair and closes the distance between them.

“Hi,” she whispers as she climbs into his lap. 

“Hey.” 

She rests her forehead against his own and releases a slow breath like she’s been holding it for a long time. Bellamy drags his hand up her thigh slowly and back down. There’s a wonder in being close to Clarke like this, a comfort that they can still be this soft with each other, even in times like these. It conjures a sweetness and an ache in his stomach that tugs at Bellamy like a homing beacon has just clicked on.

He kisses her when she nuzzles his face and for a while they do just that. She feels so good against his body, solid and real and comforting with the rising death toll around them. He loves the curve of his best friend’s back, the dip of her waist, her soft hips and the press of her breasts against him. She softens against him until all the hard chinks of her armor have receded.

“Want to stay with me tonight?’ Clarke asks quietly as she trails slow, warm kisses down his neck. He’s snuck his hand under her shirt and is slowly scaling the vertebrae of her spine, one by one.

“I do,” Bellamy murmurs into her shoulder. Her skin is warm under his lips and tastes like the richness of the woods, dark and wonderous. “Yeah, I really do.”

They don’t name this between them. It’s neither new nor old, or anything as simple as having a definition or even a routine. But it’s easy and it feels right, and like all the human moments that have defined their leadership and teamwork through the three years they’ve known each other, it slipped in between the cracks. He doesn’t know how exactly it changes things between them, but it’s as natural as breathing to wake up with Clarke naked and warm in the bed next to him. 

Another attack. Three dead, one of them a Skaikru child. 

“You need to send me to Azgeda,” Clarke says, slamming her hands down on the council table. She’s a whirlwind of power, blonde hair loose and snapping blue eyes which he knows from personal experience are all at once intimidating and infuriating. Bellamy watches the flicker of annoyance across the councilor’s faces now. 

“Ms. Griffin,” Councilor Shunji starts. “I don’t remember summoning you to the council chambers.”

“That’s because all of you are too stubborn to,” Bellamy says, crossing his arms behind Clarke. 

“Captain Blake, your presence is also unrequested today. Both of you need to-”

“No, _you_ need to listen,” Clarke interrupts them again. Abby’s mouth is a straight line, but she’s given up fighting her daughter in any political arena. Bellamy knows she’ll stay silent for the duration of their siege. Kane is trying to catch Bellamy’s eye, and he steadfastly ignores him. “War is not the answer with Azgeda, it never has been.”

“King Roan has rejected our messengers,” Jaha says, leaning back in his chair. “What makes you think you’ll be any better received?”

“Because he knows me. My name still has power with Azgeda, far more than any of yours do. If you let me go, I can arrange for peace talks.”

“What makes you think-”

“You know she’s right,” Bellamy interrupts. “Clarke is still known as Wanheda to Azgeda. Sending anyone else at this point is an insult.”

“She’s not a soldier or even a member of this Council. And as such, she has no formal power or authorization to represent this body or the interests of Arkadia at large. Despite what she may think.”

“Let her go,” Abby says quietly. “It’s better that she has the backing of the Council and an official delegation. Otherwise we’ll all look like fools when she and Captain Blake come back from an unsanctioned mission.”

“Councilor Griffin–”

“She’s right,” Kane says, passing a hand over his face and looking at once annoyed and deeply tired. “Clarke and Bellamy will go with or without our approval. Might as well make it official. However, if we do give our approval for Clarke to represent us, I’d like to request that Captain Blake stays in Arkadia.”

“That’s–”

“The terms of our agreement. We’ll outfit Clarke as an official ambassador, she’ll have three of us with her, and a guard detail. But we need you here, Bellamy. Especially now.”

Bellamy meets Clarke’s eyes.

“Fine,” Bellamy says evenly. “But I’m picking the guard detail.”

It takes less than a day for Clarke to get ready. She’s got the white uniform of an official Coalition ambassador, a nod to the old ways even though the coalition died with Lexa. She’s put on the dark makeup of Wanheda and braided her hair up into an elaborate wreath around her head. She looks wild and untouchable in the yard of Arkadia, but she doesn’t leave until Bellamy climbs down from the guard tower to see her off. 

“You’ve got Adebayo and Krazinsky on your detail. Best shots I’ve got, and they both keep a cool head. Shit gets bad, you stick with Adebayo: she’ll get you home.”

Clarke nods. “Anyone impulsive?”

“None worse than me,” Bellamy says with a wry grin that Clarke matches. “Take care of yourself, ok?”

“I will. You hold down the fort here.”

“You know I will.”

They never make a point to belabor parting, but Bellamy allows himself to clap Clarke on the shoulder. Clarke’s smile touches her eyes as she looks up at him and he can see her a little better through the back eye paint. 

“I’ll be back before you know it,” she promises. “No need to worry.”

“You out there on your own? I got a hundred and one reasons to.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Clarke says. She swings up onto her horse and Bellamy signals his men at the top of the tower to open the gate. Clarke rides out and Bellamy scales the tower again in time to catch the ten of them ride hard for the tree line, and disappear into the dark and shaded woods.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments on the last chapter!

Clarke is gone for three weeks. In the first three days, Arkadia gets word of two more fights. The first one is luckily without casualties, the second leaves two dead. Then there’s nothing. A calm, tense hush falls, and Bellamy knows he should see it as a good thing, that Clarke’s been received and meetings are underway, but at night he dreams about Octavia trapped under the floor with air running out, about Clarke dead along the road somewhere. It makes his fingers itch to hold his gun all the time.

“Worrying about her isn’t going to help,” Raven tells Bellamy at the bar that night, sliding him a tin cup of moonshine. “It’s Clarke. She’ll get it done.”

Bellamy nods, but his fingers twitch again toward his purposefully empty holster. “I know.”

“Or we get her head back on a pike,” Octavia says darkly. 

“Could you not, for once, Octavia?” Bellamy snaps and his sister, swathed in dark leather and makeup lifts her hands in defense.

“Jeeze, relax, Bellamy. I wouldn’t joke about it if I thought it was possible.”

“Small comfort.”

It’s rare these days for Octavia to join him in drinking, in anything really. The last two years between them feels like a new life time, one in which the gentle if secluded and secretive nature of their childhood never even existed. Octavia prefers solitude to people, even to him. She’s gone more days than she’s in Arkadia, but Trikru rarely sees her, nor do any of the other krus. Octavia wanders the dark of the woods alone. What she does out there she doesn’t really talk about, unless she decides it’s worth sharing. 

Any effort Bellamy has made in the past two years to reach his sister has been systematically shut down. He misses her like he misses a limb, but Octavia can’t seem to forgive him and he can’t figure out how bridge the gap that’s grown into a canyon. The most they can manage these days is prickly, barbed thing that once was affection. Neither of them can stand it for too long before Bellamy has to step away and Octavia leaves Arkadia again.

Still, sometimes they seek each other out. There are so few of them left in Arkadia these days, those that were the first down on the ground. Monty, Harper and Miller left a little over six months ago, to where, Bellamy wasn’t quite sure, but sometimes Octavia came back with news that they were doing fine out past Trikru’s Western territory line. Murphy is supposedly still alive out there somewhere, but Bellamy hasn’t seen him since Polis. Now with Jasper dead, it’s just Raven, Octavia, Bellamy and Clarke, and peace has made even their ties weak. 

“You know,” Octavia continues thoughtfully. “The most likely outcome is that Clarke comes back and she’s actually conquered Azgeda. It’d be unlike her to get killed.”

“That’s true,” Raven muses. “If there’s anyone who can find a way out of a war with Azgeda, it’s Clarke.”

“You just never know when it might result in several hundred dead.”

“Jesus Christ, Octavia. Clarke’s trying to save lives.” 

“Sure. But you sent out Wanheda.”

“She’s still Clarke,” Bellamy says, not looking at his sister and instead knocking back the rest of his drink. “Raven, you want another?”

“I’m just saying,” Octavia mutters under her breath. “Clarke does what she needs to do.”

“You know, she’s not wrong,” Raven says, swirling the dregs of moonshine in her cup and then downing it with a grimace. “The thing with Clarke is, I’ve learned to hope for the best and expect the worst. 

“Come on, Bellamy,” she says when he shakes his head. “Clarke’s the reason we’re all still here, I know that. But she knows there aren’t any miracles on this planet.”

“She doesn’t need miracles,” he says, bruskly. “She’s Clarke. You want another or not?”

“Alright,” Raven says, giving up her cup with a sigh that broadcasts resignation.

“Octavia?”

His sister just looks at him and then shakes her head. “I’m going to the stables.”

“You know you’ve got a room and a bed,” Bellamy tries but Octavia just shrugs.

“I’m leaving early. I’d rather sleep with Helios.”

“O…”

“Let it go,” Raven advises him. “If you’re going to fight any battles, you really gotta learn to pick them.”

“You know that’s never been my strong suit.”

“I know,” Raven says, patting his arm. “I know.”

\--

It’s just after midnight when a line of riders break from the tweeline and, single file, ride back to the gates. Bellamy’s only one of two manning the guard tower, and while the riders are all cloaked both in their own riding gear and the dark, he can recognize Adebayo’s straight backed posture; Councilor Shunji’s lithe, athletic form; and in the middle, Clarke’s easy confidence in the saddle. It’s the returning delegation, but only half of them are present.

They arrive without any fuss, and Bellamy knows better than to scale down the ladder to greet them and instead keeps one eye on the treeline. An attack could arrive in the confusion of a friendly arrival, and until he’s heard otherwise, he’s not going to make any assumptions about peace and safety. He’s learned that the hard way too many times. 

By the time his replacement for the early morning hours is debriefed and had a strong cup of coffee, the delegation has dispersed and the last of the horses is being lead into the stables. Bellamy chooses the long way back to his room, the one that takes him past Clarke’s room on the off chance she’s still awake. But there’s no light from under the door and Bellamy doesn’t knock. He can imagine she needs the sleep.

But when he turns the corner to his hall, she’s there. Leaning back against the wall by his door with her eyes closed, she’s barefaced: her wanheda makeup washed away. It leaves no place for her exhaustion to hide, but she still opens her eyes at the sound of his footsteps.

She pushes herself off the wall and shakes herself a little, stepping up to greet him.

“Hey,” Bellamy says. “How’d it go?”

“We got it done.” Her voice is even, almost flat, but she gives him a faint smile. “The Azgedan delegation arrives tomorrow to sign a new peace treaty with the Council.”

“Only half of you came back.”

“Yeah, the rest of the party comes tomorrow with Azgeda. Good faith and goodwill and all that. Councilor Shunji came back to prep the Council and I just… I wanted to come back tonight too.”

Something about her is off. Her eyes are veiled and she’s tense, every angle of her body sharper than she should be: all nervous energy wound too tight.

“What did it take to settle things?”

“Nothing Arkadia couldn’t afford to give up,” she says, with an almost bitterness that surprises him. 

“Hey.” He reaches out to touch her arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah... Sorry,” She murmurs, scrubbing her hands across her face gives him an impression of another smile. “It’s just been a long few days of riding. How were things here?”

“You want to come in?” Bellamy asks nodding at his door. “We can sit and talk.”

Clarke nods, relief washing her blunt, pretty features. “I’d like that.”

His room is small, minimally furnished with little more than his bed and the built in desk and dresser that’s only half full. He’s pinned the drawing Clarke gifted him a year ago above his desk, and his whittling supplies with half completed projects spill out of their small basket. He drops his jacket on his chair and tries to clean up the sprawl of his half hearted undertakings.

“Uh, things were good here. News of a couple attacks in the first few days after you left, and then things went quiet. No internal emergencies but–” 

Clarke steps up behind him unexpectedly and slips her arms around his chest. She presses close and Bellamy can feel the weight of her forehead resting between his shoulder blades. He covers her hands in his, the best he can do to return her sudden hug. 

“But?” she prompts him, offering no explanation.

“No internal emergencies, but we completed an inventory of grain and meat for the winter and you were right: it’ll only barely be enough if we do have to ration.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Clarke says quietly. “There’ll be enough.”

“You gonna tell me how that’s possible?” 

She’s quiet for a moment and Bellamy feels a tremor of that tight nervous energy slip her control before she shakes her head. “Part of the new treaty. Sorry, my brain feels too thick to think through it right now.”

“That’s ok,” he tells her quietly, brushing his thumbs along her wrists. “I don’t know how you always manage to save our asses, but you do.”

“Sheer, pigheaded stubbornness,” Clarke jokes, but her voice rings a little hollow. Her hands drop slowly from him, and Bellamy turns before she can step back too far and pulls her back in. Sometimes Clarke forgets that she needs to be held too.

“How long did the talks take?” He asks as she tucks her face against his chest. 

“Twelve days, maybe?” She lets out a breath that warms the thin shirt fabric against his skin as he runs a hand down her back. “For a while I didn’t think they’d ever end.”

“But they did, because of you. And now you’re home.” 

“Yeah.” She pulls back from him and rubs her face with both hands again. “I’m so tired, Bellamy.”

“I can bet,” he murmurs, not quite sure how to soothe whatever it is that’s got her so on edge. “Stay here tonight, huh? Get the sleep you need.”

Clarke nods and accepts the clean T-shirt he digs out of his dresser for her to wear. She changes without any fuss, kicking down her leggings and piling them with her jacket and shirt on the seat of his desk chair. Her hair comes down- she always wears it loose to sleep- and she half heartedly brushes her fingers through it, winces at the first tangle, and gives up with an almost helpless little sound.

It’s a practice he’s often seen her complete with brutal efficiency, yanking her fingers through her hair as they talk about other things. Sometimes on nights they spend together, she lets Bellamy untangle the inevitable knots for her, fingers slow and gentle when he finds the snags, combing through them until Clarke’s eyes are heavy lidded and she leans into his touch. He’d offer now, but she looks dead on her feet. In the morning, maybe, there’ll be time for that.

He expects her to pass out the moment they turn off the light but she lies too still in the dark next to him, body all sharp edges and angles for a long time.

“Bellamy?” It comes out soft, like she’s hoping he’s asleep.

“Yeah?”

He hears her soft intake of breath but there’s just a long stretch of silence. Instead of filling it, she rolls into him and slips her hand down his body into his boxers. His cock is soft but she touches him slowly until he’s hard, and then she burrows down under the covers.

“Clarke–”

“I’ll rest in a minute.” Her voice vibrates against his stomach, ever the mind reader even when she can’t see his face. ”I want to do this.” 

And then she’s pulling him out and and closing her lips over him. Her mouth is wet and warm and impossibly perfect and she sucks at him slow and sure, not teasing him or pulling out any tricks, but he doesn’t need any of that. She moves up and down his cock with a certainty, her calloused palm and fingers working the length of him she can’t reach. 

She finds one of his hands and pulls it to her head, and Bellamy sinks his fingers into his hair and rubs at her scalp as she works him over. Slick lips, the brush of the velvety inside of her cheek, the barely there rough of her tongue and the occasional bump of the back of her throat combine to be too much and Bellamy finally can’t hold himself back. She doesn’t pull off him until he protests weakly, and even then she licks him clean and cups him until he’s soft enough for her to tuck him back into his boxers. 

“Come here,,” Bellamy says when she reappears above the blankets. “I gotta do the same for you.”

She’s wet when he gets his mouth on her, but only just. He returns the slow, thorough skill of her mouth: wide flat licks up her cunt, rubbing gently at her outer labia, making it sloppy and generous until between the two of them she’s wet to his liking. He gives her clit some love after that, tongue firm and slow, turning deep, focused circles on it until Clarke’s legs are shaking and her breathings gone short and shallow. He slips a finger and then two into her and rubs on her, firm. 

He can’t quite get her there, which happens sometimes to both of them when they’re tired or stressed, but he stays on her until Clarke guides him back up to her. Her eyes are damp and it makes his heart clench. “Hey, hey,” he murmurs as he brushes her hair back from her face. “What is it, Clarke?”

“Nothing. I just really wanted to come for you.”

“Lemme keep going–”

“It’s okay,” she whispers. The shadows fall across her eyes like her wanheda make up, threatening to steal her away from him, but she wraps fingers around his wrist and holds on to him tight. “It’s okay. I don’t think I will tonight.”

“In the morning then,” he murmurs, happy to draw her in. She’s not usually much of a cuddler when they do this, but tonight she presses her forehead against his and stays close. “In the morning, for however long we need.”

Her fingers skitter across his cheek and breath comes out in a shudder. “Hey. You know you’re the best person I know, right?”

“Clarke,” Bellamy says, worry twisting his stomach. “You sure everything’s ok?”

She kisses him for the first time that night, mouth a little desperate. 

“Everything’s going to be fine,” she says when she pulls back. “Don’t worry, okay?”

It’s not quite a real answer, but he trusts her that she’ll tell him when she’s ready or he needs to know. He tucks her under his arm as long as she’s wanting to be close. He scritches his fingers into her hair and slowly, slowly, it seems, the nervous energy in her starts to unwind and ebb. Their breathing evens out and sleep tugs on Bellamy’s conscious until finally he gives in and slips under.

\--

When he wakes in the morning, Clarke is gone. It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it leaves Bellamy uneasy: to stretch his fingers across the mattress and find only pilled sheets where he’s expecting Clarke.

\--

The Azgedan delegation arrives at noon with the remainder of the Arkadian party. Bellamy is assigned crowd control and with no Clarke in sight, he weaves through the gathering Arkadians as the Azgeda ambassadors hand off their black chargers to the stable guards. 

They’re older than most Azgedans that Bellamy’s seen by a good ten to twenty years, and he’s struck for the first time that he’s only ever known Azgedan warriors in their prime. These men and women, middle aged though they may be, have no need for the chalky white face paint and war masks of bone. They look just as deadly on their own, scars and wrinkles and sharp eyes that do little to belie a cold ruthlessness. They eye the populace of Arkadia with a distinct dislike and Bellamy sees one fiddling with a hand of a dagger sheathed on her belt. One wrong move and twelve days of peace talks could end in a blood bath. Bellamy pulls two more guards into patrol with him, two of his most level headed. He wishes he knew where Clarke was. 

In a nod to political practice as old as politics itself, the Council and the Ambassadors have lunch together before any final talks start. There isn’t any alcohol, blessedly, and Bellamy walks the perimeter of the mess hall and keeps curious and tense Arkadians away. There’s a bubbling, hungry tension in Arkadia today, and he has to roughly disperse a gathering group of young teenagers, none older than thirteen, who look to be attempting to plot to take out the whole Azgedan envoy.

“Give me that,” Bellamy growls, confiscating a poorly made shank from the hand of a blond kid. “You idiots are going to get us into worse shit than we’re already in.”

“But my dad says they’re going to take the last of our supplies and leave us to die. We have to fight them now, Captain Blake.”

“I know your dad, Lydia,” Bellamy tells the tall, dark haired girl that seems to have made herself the leader of the group. “And he should know better than to go riling up his daughter. All of you go home. Now.”

The teenagers slink off sulking, and Bellamy makes a note to have the patrols keep an eye out for any mutinous looking groups. 

“You know, not so long ago you would have been their ring leader. How times have changed.”

Bellamy tries to fight the way he jumps and turns to find Echo watching him against the steel wall of the Ark. He hasn’t seen her except from afar in the two years since they took down ALIE in Polis, but she looks ever the same. She’s wearing thick gloves and a furred vest with a hood– twice the protection from the cold than anyone in Arkadia has. She didn’t arrive this morning with the Ambassadors.

“How did you get here?” 

Echo laughs. “You opened the gate for me last night.” 

Bellamy wants to kick himself for not realizing sooner. Of course Azgeda wouldn’t trust half the Arkadian delegation to return before them. Of course Echo would come with them, swaddled in the disguise of darkness and friendly riders. He hates how she is still one step ahead of him, how he’s still trying to catch up to her. Guilt and rage and something dark and bloodthirsty lurch in Bellamy’s chest and he turns away before he lets it get the best of him.

Echo falls silently into step next to him and Bellamy fights down the instinctive urge to sink the shiv into her. “What the fuck do you want, Echo?”

“Can’t a girl drop in from time to time to see her cage-springing hero?”

Bellamy nearly gives into the urge to use the shiv and he sees from the dark glitter in Echo’s eyes that she knows exactly how close she just got him to starting an out and out brawl in the yard. Barely two sentences in and he makes her want to kill something. Cold, hard hatred rises in his chest and the loss of Gina, of Farm Station rankles, feels fresh anew.

“Oh, come on,” she teases him. “Still no sense of humor?”

 

“Not a lot to laugh about from where I’m standing,” Bellamy snarls softly, stopping abruptly. “Last time I saw you, forty-eight people in Mountain Weather were murdered, including my girlfriend. And now here we are again, with Azgeda starting a war with Skaikru.”

“Careful, Bellamy,” Echo says, ever cool. She steps closer with a cold smile and bows her head close to his like they’re confidants. “We didn’t murder children.”

“Jasper was murdered first.”

“That boy was a drunken idiot, but those responsible were dealt with,” Echo says evenly. “I saw to it. Tell me, were you the one to execute the man who killed our kids?”

Bellamy can’t answer that. Echo raises her eyebrows. “I thought not. Skaikru chose to escalate the death of the Village Idiot with a war crime. You’re lucky that your Wanheda could find a way out of this.”

“We all are,” he says gruffly. “War doesn’t serve either of us.”

Echo just shrugs under her furs. “Depends on who you ask.”

Behind them, the Council and the Azgeda Ambassadors exit the mess hall and walk together toward the Ark where the Council chambers are. Echo’s eyes track the progress and Bellamy grits his teeth and scans for any last minute would-be assassin teenagers. None immediately appear and he relaxes as much as he can.

“And would that be you? Spies thrive on wars.”

Echo smiles at him, like he’s just paid her a compliment. “Officially, I’m now the head of my King’s Private Guard now. War only complicates my job.”

“And what exactly is your job? Execution?”

“Only when necessary. Today, it’s making sure his interests are protected.”

“And what are those exactly?”

“Wanheda’s well being, of course.”

“Clarke’s,” he corrects impulsively. And then as her words catch up with him: “Wait, what?”

There’s a quick flash of surprise in her eyes before the placid smile returns to Echo’s face. “I’m sure Clarke filled you in on the details last night. It was your room she snuck out of this morning, wasn’t it?”

Bellamy grints his teeth. “We talked about the peace treaty last night. So?”

Echo chuckles under her breath. “Don’t worry, she’s free to have whatever relationships she choses before the engagement’s finalized.”

“What?” Bellamy snaps. He feels like his whole body has just been doused in ice even as nothing Echo says makes any sense. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Echo cocks her head at him, studying him suddenly very carefully. “The peace treaty?” she prompts. “The major term of the peace treaty?”

Bellamy opens his mouth to reply and then closes it again. The world spins around him and he’s still a step behind, still has no idea what’s going on. Clarke’s silence last night rings around him now. He doesn’t know anything about the terms of the treaty.

Echo reaches out, lightning fast and touches Bellamy’s shoulder. Her hand is gone before he even has a chance to flinch out of her reach. “Listen. You’re going to want to be at that Council meeting,” she says. 

“Why?”

Her eyes flick down his body. “Loose the shank and go to the meeting.” And then she turns and walks away.

Bellamy looks down at his fist and his fingers are bone white where they’re clenched on the handle of the shiv. When he manages to uncurl his fingers, the metal handle has bitten deep.

The hall outside of the Council chambers is crowded with Arkadians, everyone clearly trying to hear what’s going on behind the closed door. There are a few who have brought sticks that Bellamy stops long enough to order them out before pushing his way to the front of the crowd.

McCroy is on duty outside the door and snaps to attention as Bellamy reaches him. “Uh, Captain Blake. I’m not sure you’re needed inside,” he says clearly nervous as Bellamy reaches to open the door.

“Is that a fucking fact, McCroy? Someone tell you that?”

“Well, no but–” Bellamy levels him with a glare and McCroy drops his eyes and steps aside.

“Clear this hallway,” Bellamy snaps. “And hold your rifle like a goddamn soldier.”

“Yessir.” 

He knows he’ll catch whispers of it later: Captain Blake, a hardass who let his promotion go to his head. He doesn’t give a shit.

The Council chambers are crowded this morning. In addition to the full council of twelve and the sitting Chancellor, nine Azgedan officials have been given seats at the table. It’s caused everyone to crunch together, trying to afford ever person deserving of a seat the dignity of having access to the table, but leaves them all looking mildly uncomfortable at the forced proximity to their neighbors. More people stand in a second ring around the table and Bellamy catches sight of Clarke. 

She’s standing back a bit, dressed in her normal canvas jacket and slacks. She hasn’t done her Wanheda make up, and Bellamy can see the bags under her eyes. She looks up at him as he comes in and he sees something uneasy flick across her face. 

She starts to make her way toward him, but just then, Jaha raps his gavel again the table, unnecessarily as everyone in the room is hushed, tense. He clears his throat anyway, and Clarke stops, caught in a half motion before she falls still and turns her attention back to the Council table, ever the diplomat. Bellamy settles in place next to the door.

“We welcome Azgeda to our Council Meeting today,” Jaha starts. “And extend our gratitude that two great Krus can find it within ourselves to embrace the possibility of peace over the easy path of war. Strength, as we all know, comes not from the slaying of our brothers and sisters, but in Unity with our estranged families. Families can be made whole, of course, which is what we seek to do so today.”

He must have worked hard on this one, Bellamy thinks. If Clarke was standing next to him, she’d nudge him without looking at him, knowing exactly what he was thinking. Her eyes slide to him now and something is wrong, she looks so uneasy. He starts to work his way around the wall, trying to reach her without too much disruption.

“We understand,” Jaha continues “That our ambassador was able to deliver terms that were acceptable to Azgeda. It is on those terms that we shall now vote, and we pray that these terms, if approved and ratified, will see lasting peace between our people. Ambassador Cutlass, you have the floor.”

One of the most senior Azgedan men rises and Bellamy bites back the bitterness that it’s him and Jaha leading the meeting. If not for Clarke, none of them would be here right now. She’s just twenty, and despite the fact that she’s the youngest in this room by a good ten years, she’s done what no one else could. Sent to Azgeda armed with nothing but a name she hates and the Council’s grudging approval, she’s pulled them back from the edge of war and brought them together to solidify peace. 

Cutlass must be close to eighty, older than the majority of people Bellamy’s ever met. His hair, once red, is now silver but still thick and long, his shoulders broad. He stands without assistance, and although his voice croaks more than rumbles, it doesn’t waver.

“The terms of the treaty are these,” Cutlass says. “In a months time, Wanheda, born Clarke Griffin, will marry King Roan of Azgeda, first of his name. They will reside permanently in the Azgeda Capitol. The marriage term is for life, and neither shall remarry in the event of the other’s death.”

Before, the world spun. Now, it feels like he’s falling. Or rather he’s frozen, and the floor, the air, all the sound in the room is rushing up over him and nothing makes sense. Blood pounds in his ears, his stomach turns. 

He can’t have heard right. Echo got into his head. His own anxiety is playing tricks on him. Bellamy shakes his head, trying to clear it, trying to find his way back to reality.

“The marriage must produce at least three children, two of whom must be boys. These children will represent the lives lost at Skaikru hands, returned to Azgeda by their Skaikru born mother. Being of both Azgeda and Skaikru blood, they, like the union of their parents will represent a new time of lasting peace between our krus, for family does not raise arms against family.”

Something, someone touches his shoulder and he thinks he hears Clarke’s voice say his name, soft and urgent, but he can’t take his eyes off of the old man’s auburn streaked beard, his chapped, liver spotted lips. None of this is right. None of this makes any sense.

“Family, of course, also helps family. As a gift of love to his future wife, King Roan has agreed to pay off the debt in full to Shallow Valley that Skaikru owes so that trade may reopen. Azgeda shall also repay, to Skaikru, the goods burned that were meant for Shallow Valley in the form of necessary food, supplies and tools that will assist Skaikru through this winter and shall help them flourish in the future.”

The Azgedan official taps his papers and looks up at the room. “How does the Council of Skaikru respond?”

“No. Absolutely not.” 

“Bellamy,” Clarke hisses. She’s right next to him. When did she get there?

“That’s not a peace treaty, that’s a fucking hostage situation.”

“Captain Blake-”

“Bellamy,” Clarke says again. She tugs hard enough on his arm that he looks at her. “Stop.”

“Clarke, do you hear–”

“You need to go,” Clarke grits out. “Right now.”

“Captain Blake, you are disrupting a vital meeting which is about to dictate our future. Consider yourself immediately dismissed.”

“No, I’m not going to leave you all to–”

“Bellamy, just go,” Clarke says, giving his shoulder a soft shove. “Please, ok? I’ll come find you when it’s over and-”

“Lieutenant Morales, remove Captain Blake from the room.”

“Clarke-” A hand claps down on his shoulder and Bellamy turns with a near snarl and punches Morales. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Another Arkadian guard grabs his arm, and then one of the Azgedan guards has him in a head lock and Bellamy twists viciously to get out of it.

“Bellamy, stop, please,” Clarke begs. “Don’t make them hurt you, just go.”

“Clarke, how can you just stand there when they’re bargaining away your life?”

Bellamy elbows the Azgedan guard in the stomach to, but it just makes her tighten her hold on his windpipe. Bellamy chokes and tries to twist out of it to no avail.

“Bellamy, stop!”

His hands are jerked behind his back, and he snarls, uses his weight to throw the man behind him off, but the arm around his neck just gets tighter. 

“I’m not gonna,” he chokes. “I’m not gonna let them do this to you.”

“Bellamy, I made the deal!” Clarke shouts at him.

More than the spots starting to glimmer at the edge of his vision, more than the handcuffs that close sharp and cold around his wrists, it’s her words that freeze him. 

“I made the deal, ok?” Clarke says again softly. And then, “Let him go.”

“Guards,” Jaha cuts in. Bellamy looks past Clarke to see that the whole Council and all the Azgedan officials have risen in the midst of the brawl and are staring at them. He thinks he could strangle each and everyone one of them, the cold rage in his chest is that strong. “Escort Captain Blake to the brig.”

“No–” Clarke starts but there’s already pressure on the back of his neck, making Bellamy stumble forward. “No, there’s no need for that.”

No one listens to her. The last thing he sees of the Council room is Clarke standing in the midst of Councilors and Ambassadors, a shaft of light making her hair glow around her face.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the comments on the last chapter! Great to hear all your thoughts~

After hours shut up in the windowless, dark hall, the last rays of sunlight on her face are a blessing. A brusk, cool wind ruffles her hair and Clarke pulls it back into a low twist that only holds for a moment, shrugs her cloak tighter around her. It’s too cold to stay by the open window for too long, but she can’t bare to leave it. The sunset casts the mountains in golden and pink light, and this high up in the old church that’s been reclaimed to become the Azgedan seat of power, she can see for miles. 

It reminds her of Polis, but more beautiful. Polis had been surrounded by flat lands, but out here there are rolling hills and mountains, craggy cliffs and deep pine forests, all backlit in golden haze. Clarke had never been able to imagine this much detail back on the Ark. 

She wishes she were in the mood to enjoy it. Her head hurts from the endless conversation and political posturing that keeps circling back to the same point. _How can we accept any terms of peace without the return of our children?_

Roan’s advisors themselves are all smiles and politeness, respectful of her and tolerant Councilor Shunji and Alaster, but it’s the same point, over and over and over. It’d only taken her three circles to realize what they’re actually after. She’s danced around it for nine days, and for nine days fought off the slow, deepening realization that she’s running out of options. For everything she’s offered, coaxed and baited, they haven’t given her an opening for anything else in her arsenal. 

She rubs her forehead with her fingers and takes a slow breath. She wants to go home, home to Arkadia, home to the quiet invisibility where the majority of people would prefer to ignore her over anything else. The walls are too constricting here, the smiles of the advisors too saccharin, their eyes too possessive. It all makes her skin crawl and she pushes down again the wave of something big and overwhelming that starts in her stomach and threatens to encompass her. _How can we accept any terms of peace without the return of our children?_

Fresh air is good: a reminder that there’s a world beyond all of this that she’ll be able to return to soon. 

A door swings open behind her, over loud, and Clarke turns to see Roan standing in the threshold. Whether he’s surprised to see her or sought her out intentionally, his face gives nothing away.

“Wanheda. Enjoying the view?”

“It’s pretty,” Clarke says, leaning more comfortably against the window sill. “I’ll be honest, I was expecting more snow though. The Ice Nation isn’t quite living up to its name”

“Don’t let it fool you,” Roan muses as he joins her at the window, bracing a foot against the low sill. “In a few weeks the mountains will be covered in snow. We’ll get a lot down here too. Much more than what your people struggle with.”

Clarke wrinkles her nose. “What a lovely place to live.”

“It can be beautiful. I missed it when I was banished.”

There’s a silence that’s companionable only in that neither of them tries to throw the other from the window. 

“Your mother,” Clarke muses after a moment, keeping her voice casual. “She believed that killing me would give her the power to command death, right?”

“Everyone believes that killing you would give them power to command death,” Roan says lazily. “Most people don’t consider it possible, however, given that you’re still alive despite your natural talent for pissing people off.”

“I’m reminded of that fact daily, thanks.” Clarke drawls and Roan’s eyebrows lift. Amused or annoyed? He’s hard to read. He’s sat across from her for the last nine days and has barely said a word.

“So power is transferable after death,” Clarke says and feels Roan’s eyes slide to her. So much for subtlety, but that’s ok. She’s just as good with a sledgehammer. “What about through children?”

Roan snorts. “You know, Argrave was just complaining to me that you’re impossibly dense. I figured you were just biding your time. How long have you known what they’re asking for?”

“Since the second day. Why are they so fixated on this?”

Roan considers her for a long moment, sharp eyes calculating. “What better heirs to the throne than the children of Wanheda?”

It makes her blood run cold to hear it so plainly said but she smiles all the same. “Oh, so it’s about solidifying power. Are you worried you don’t have your people’s love, Roan?”

“People’s love isn’t what worries me,” Roan chuckles after a beat. 

“You’ve been challenged?” Clarke guesses. “I can see why, banished for what, five years? Your people don’t recognize you as their King.”

He starts to say something and then actually laughs and shakes his head. “Oh no. No, Wanheda, I saw your tricks after the City of Light. I watched you secure land twice the size of what you should have gotten for Arkadia. That won’t work here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clarke says innocently. She’d almost gotten him, she thinks. A little more and she’d have had enough to actually bargain with, to pry the Azgedan advisors just far enough away from their center that another deal could be found. She doesn’t let the acid burn of disappointment show. 

“Listen, I don’t love the prospect of it much either,” Roan says. “I think marrying you would be more of a headache than anything else. But my advisers are clear on the fact that any heir has to be legitimate.”

Clarke shakes her head and doesn’t look at Roan. There’s a distant flock of birds headed toward the mountains that are deepening in blue and purple.

“It would be annoying,” Clarke muses, carefully recalibrating. “If you don’t want to marry me, there must be another way we can figure this out. I know you, Roan. You’re smart, and you don’t need to be controlled by people who are easily swayed by the idea of some made up power that I have. I know as King you are the one who has the power here. What do you want out of this? Between you and me, I know we can work something out.”

Roan gives her another side long glance. “Careful, Clarke. I don’t have such a big ego yet that your flattery makes me forget that I am Azgeda first and foremost. You are not my confidant, and I will follow what my Advisors have chosen in this instance.”

It’s funny, even with the open window with the land stretched out in front of her, and the large, airy room at her back, Clarke can feel her shoulders pressed into the corner she’s been backed into. Her chest constricts and she takes a slow breath, slow and quiet enough that Roan can’t tell. 

“There’s really nothing else that Azgeda will accept?” She asks after a moment.

“It’s this, or the raids continue.”

The sun’s lingering light clings to the tops of dark mountains, the pink faded to an orange and deep golden glow. Winter sunsets are beautiful, but the stars on a summer night are incomparable, she thinks with a funny kind of heartache. 

The best spot for stargazing is a clearing about a half mile from Arkadia. She could always count on finding Bellamy there when he got into one of his moods and disappeared. There was no better view of the stars in the world than that clearing, no softer grass or moss carpeted logs for cushions. No better company either. 

Maybe he was right, Clarke thinks. Jasper’s death, the kids, the seemingly random instances that lead to this ultimatum. Maybe Bellamy was right that Jasper’s death hadn’t been an accident. But if there’s something more, the intricacies escape her, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

“Well then,” Clarke says after a moment. “Azgeda must be pretty desperate to make this deal.” 

The triumph feels hollow.

\--

The terms are too good to even question, she’d made sure of that. 

Negotiation is a game Clarke’s gotten good at and once she knows the only choice she’s got, she makes the most of it. There was a certain elegance to a marriage that she could appreciate, especially from the odd perspective of floating just outside her body: no bloodshed, just a neat, painless union between two leaders that extended peace to both of their people. 

So little by little, piece by piece, she’d fed the Azgedan Advisors what they wanted while securing Arkadia’s future beyond just an end to the raids. And when that was done, she’d had just enough leverage left to guarantee her own safety. Marriage for life and fidelity after death weren’t perfect, but they made the prospects of getting rid of her less tantalizing. She could accept having two boys with those clauses.

After Bellamy is removed from the Council Chambers, there’s some smoothing of ruffled feathers and then there’s very little left to work out. The Arkadian Council wants guarantees that Azgeda won’t interfere with their economy and farming, and that’s easily agreed upon. 

“I have a question,” Abby says right before the vote takes place. Clarke hasn’t looked at her mom for the entire meeting. She’s not sure what she’d find on Abby’s face: grief, fear, relief? Clarke doesn’t know which would be the worst, or which she could handle. It’s easier to just stand quietly by and make sure everything goes as planned. 

“Councilor Griffin?”

“The terms say that Clarke has to live in Azgeda permanently. What exactly does that mean?”

There’s a quiet conference among the Ambassadors and then Cutlass clears his throat. 

“Wanheda may not live in another place aside from Azgeda. However, she may visit Arkadia of course, as it symbolizes her place of birth. Naturally, as our Krus are aligned, we welcome Skaikru visitors in our capitol, within reason.”

Abby nods. She’s the last to vote and right before she does, she finds Clarke’s eyes. Clarke gives her a tiny nod. She knows her mom will vote in favor of the marriage, but maybe it’s a little easier for both of them if they can pretend that she has Clarke’s permission.

Clarke opens her palm when she steps back out into the sunlight and looks down at her empty cupped hand. She can feel the weak warmth of the sun, but nothing else feels quite like reality. Nothing has since she finally pulled herself from the restless doze she’d only just managed to reach in the early hours of the morning. Bellamy had been so warm against her, his arm heavy on her waist, the soft gusts of his breath whispering across the top of her head. 

As she’d slipped out of his bed this morning, she’d known that the next time she saw him, everything would be different. She’d have to tell him. There would be no more outs like she’d gotten last night, when exhaustion and relief at seeing him had loosened the tight seal of her common sense and she’d been washed in the sudden, overwhelming reality of what was happening. 

Everything she’d meant to tell him suddenly felt unspeakable, and the only thing she could do to keep herself in check was curl around his back and hold tight. Funny, how it was only then she realized how much she was going to lose. It wasn’t just Arkadia, and her mom and the semblance of routine and life she’d put together over the past few years, it was also Bellamy.

Bellamy, who, with his defenses down, was a little softer, a little gentler, a little more himself with her than she usually got to see him. She’d lose the way he smelled at the end of the day, like sweat and fresh air and forest; the way his voice got low and gruff with sleep, but also with affection; the way he could touch her with a curiosity and a confidence and an ease that made her still feel beautiful and human. She’d wondered if that night was the last chance she’d get to feel what she always somehow felt around him: safe, seen and understood.

She should have told him last night, but all she’d been able to take was one last night: untouched hours where she was just Clarke, and he knew her inside and out and he still just saw her and nothing else.

Guilt and annoyance twist through her. He shouldn’t have been in that meeting. That wasn’t the way she had wanted him to find out, but even so, he should have known better than try to stop it. It was just so fucking typical that it makes her feel like she wants to laugh and cry all at once. She should go get him.

She gets approval from Jaha with the promise to pass on the fact that Bellamy’s suspended from his duties until further notice. 

Bellamy’s a tense ball of dark anger in the back of the holding cell. He’s sitting, but only just, hands flexing, feet shifting, like he’s barely contained in his own body. He’s torn his jacket off and it’s in the opposite corner. The gold Captain insignia on his jacket is bent and misshapen, like it’s been stomped on a few times. He looks up as she stops in front of his cell and he grimaces when he sees her.

“I thought we passed the phase of starting brawls at Council meetings.” Clarke tries for light-hearted and is met only with Bellamy’s biting silence. 

“Why’d you do that, Bellamy? You know they’re going to demote you.”

“How can you ask me that?” Bellamy grunts. His voice sounds hoarse, raw. “How does that matter?”

“It matters to me,” Clarke says softly. “You worked hard to get to Captain.” 

“Clarke, stop. Just stop.” The violence in his voice brings him to his feet and across the small cell without him seeming to realize it. “How does anything fucking matter except for the fact that they’re forcing you to marry fucking Roan to get us peace?”

She looks up at him. “Because those little things are what peace is for, Bellamy. Our lives… the lives of our people. That’s all anything has ever been for.”

“Not this.” He shakes his head. “This isn’t right, Clarke.”

He doesn’t get it. “Hey, Randall? The Council’s releasing him for the time being. Can you let him out please?”

The guard on duty comes and unlocks the door and Bellamy doesn’t look at him as he pushes past him, leaving his jacket behind. “Come on.”

Clarke follows him, knowing where he’s going without asking. Neither of them speak again until she lets them into the small clinic office and locks the door behind them. She turns to look at him and he looks wrecked. He’s got a ring of bruises setting in around his throat and a scratch across his cheek. 

“Sit down,” she says gently, “Let me disinfect that.” 

He doesn’t move. His eyes are wild as he searches her face. “Clarke, please,” he murmurs as she steps close to clean up his face. “You gotta tell me what’s going on here. What’s the plan? Cause for the life of me I can’t see it.” 

He stays still enough for her dab a little at the cut before he catches her wrist and gives it a desperate little shake to get her to look at him. “Clarke,” he croaks.

She takes a careful step away from him on the pretense of putting down the gauze on a little surgical table.

“There’s no other plan, Bellamy, except for the treaty. I’m going to marry Roan and we’ll get peace for our people. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Bellamy repeats, staring at her like she’s not making any sense. “How is ‘that it’? Clarke, do you not hear yourself right now?”

“It’s simple,” she says carefully, leaning back against the door and crossing her arms. “The ceasefire didn’t work and Azgeda was dead set on this, so… I agreed. We needed something we could count on to hold.”

“Clarke, _nothing_ is guaranteed to hold. We make treaties and alliances to do the best we can in the moment.”

“I know that,” she says as evenly as she can, not really in a mood for a lecture. “And this is exactly that. Arkadia ends with more than it started and no one has to die or kill anyone to get there.”

“Except for Jasper. And those Azgedan kids. And seventeen more of our people including one of our kids, Clarke. They’re all already dead.”

“So what’s the point of killing more people and losing more of our resources?”

“Clarke,” Bellamy groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Azgeda is just using you for what Wanheda symbolizes to them.”

“God, I _know_ that, Bellamy,” Clarke bites out. “What, you think this is some sort of vanity thing? I’m not stupid, you know how I feel about Wanheda. But if they’re willing to make peace over it, why can’t I use their belief to get it? What’s the point of being ‘The Commander of Death’ if I can’t stop death from happening once in a while?”

“But through a fucking marriage?”

Clarke closes her eyes and takes a deep breath to try to hold her temper in check. “The marriage is what makes it so simple, Bellamy. It creates a family tie between us and Azgeda, so if what happened to Jasper happens again, we can settle it on an individual basis. It won’t escalate into an all out war. Can’t you see how good that will be for Arkadia?”

“Sure, you make it sound simple when you don’t include the part about you getting auctioned off to be forced to- to-” he chokes on the words and holds a hand out, imploring. “Clarke, you don’t even want kids.”

He’s the only person who knows that about her and it’s a low blow whether he means it to be or not. “Bellamy,” she warns. “We’ve always said: we put our people first.”

He shakes his head at her again. “Clarke, not like this. We can’t have a peace at the price of your future; of your fucking freedom.”

She holds up a helpless hand. “We do, though.”

“Clarke, please,” Bellamy begs, taking a step toward her, his hands falling on her shoulders, gripping her. “I’m on your side here. I want to settle this too, but we can find another way–”

“Fuck, Bellamy,” Clarke snaps, wrenching away from him. His touch is too much right now, brings back last night too quickly, all the times he’s clapped her shoulders like that.“You don’t think I tried other ways? I tried for nine days. Nine fucking days and Azgeda wouldn’t budge and I had _no_ idea what was happening back here, and who was dead and who wasn’t. There was no other way, and you shouldn’t make me defend my decision to you. It’s done, ok?”

Fuck, she’s mad at him, it burns in her chest, sharp as shrapnel. Bellamy’s eyes flare with his own checked anger and distance he closed between them reopens.

“Ok,” he says, voice low and cool, the way it goes when he’s ready to take a swing. “Then you wanna tell me what kind of precedent this sets? Cause from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look good.”

“God, don’t get so fucking _holier than thou_ on me, Bellamy. Nothing we’ve done has set a good precedent, but we needed to do it to survive, and we always did it. So we could get here. Now, we need this to survive. How is this any different?”

“It’s _entirely_ different, this is fucking archaic to mandate that you–”

“And killing people isn’t? Besides, I’ve done this before, with Lexa, if anything–”

“It doesn’t fucking matter if you’ve done this before. Actually, that makes it fucking worse. And if we’re talking peace, putting the price of our people’s lives on whether or not you can have kids doesn’t seem like a strategic political gamble, Clarke.”

“Oh fuck you,” Clarke snarls. “Do you really think I can’t handle myself? You think I’m going to roll over and let Roan do whatever he wants with me and with Arkadia if for some reason I can’t– can’t–?” She can’t finish the thought. “Do you even trust me at all?”

“I trust you think you’ve got this handled, Clarke, but-” 

“No, fuck that. Fuck that _‘I trust you think,’_ bullshit. Don’t patronize me, Bellamy.”

“Well how about what actually fucking happened with Lexa,” Bellamy explodes. “Tell me about how you handled yourself in that Clarke, because that alliance went really well for everyone, didn’t it?”

The silence rings like a slap and Clarke can’t catch her breath, she’s that angry. “That’s too fucking far, Bellamy.”

“Well you want to talk history? Let’s talk history. You left Arkadia to play ambassador, adviser, lover, whatever you call it _bullshit_ , while Arkadia continued to be starved out and then surrounded by an army. Is that the peace we’re looking forward to, because let me tell you, it’s not gonna last.”

Clarke feels herself tremble with rage and curls her fingers slowly into her palms. “I wasn’t playing at any of those things,” she says cooly. “And while I fought to keep an agreed upon treaty, you contributed to over throwing the people who made that peace and then slaughtering the army that was sent to _protect_ you.

“And you know,” she continues, voice surprisingly even despite the rage that burns her tongue. “At least I can admit I was fucking traumatized back then. I did the best I could with no support, thanks to you, after I had to _murder_ 382 people to save our own. So forgive me for not having it fully together.”

“You didn’t do that alone,” Bellamy snaps. “I fucking killed them right along with you, and I didn’t have a melt down and disappear.”

“God, maybe that’s the fucking issue! You’ve never been able to say how much that fucked you up. And I know it did, I know you were just as wrecked as I was by it, but you’ve never, not once, been able to admit it!”

She thought this was behind them, but all the fury that she buried back back on that beach two years ago rises with surprising ease. They never talked about these things and now that they’ve been dug up, they come hotter and more bitter than they were back then, mutated and ugly with resentment they hadn’t let themselves feel. 

“Why the fuck does it matter if I was, Clarke?”

“Because it makes me feel crazy when you don’t talk about it! It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me when you can’t admit that killing that many people didn’t fuck with you as much as it did me. And all you do is just try to help me or fix me all the time when you can’t even deal with your own shit.”

“Is that right? And what exactly in my own shit?”

“That you kept on killing people, Bellamy! You just kept on killing to try to make it all go away.”

Bellamy goes rigid, standing up to his full height as his face works on some semblance of control. 

“So I’m a killer now,” he says, too even, too flat. “Good to know that’s how you see me.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth: you know it’s not. God, why are you such an asshole sometimes?”

The break in her voice surprises her and she claps a hand over her mouth. She’s too angry to cry, and almost too angry to not. She takes a few shallow breaths and steadies herself, combing a hand back through her hair. Bellamy stares at her hard like he doesn’t know her, like last night he didn’t share his bed with her, let her be sweet on him, fall asleep with her cradled against his side. 

“You know what? None of this needed to be said,” Clarke grits out. “We didn’t need to do this to each other.”

“All I’m trying to do,” he says slowly, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Is tell you that this isn’t fucking right and you shouldn’t have to fucking do this. But apparently that counts as me trying to help you, and I heard you: you don’t need that.”

It’s as cruel as he means it to be and Clarke clenches her teeth at the gash it leaves. 

“Not in this case,” is all she manages to say, knowing that it must sting because it blisters her tongue as she says it. 

This is why they don’t fight: they’re too good at destroying each other. Anger prickles and stings her skin, and the man standing in front of her feels miles away from the Bellamy that drew her in and let her hide her face in his chest just because he knew she likes to be held even when she doesn’t know how to ask for it. She pushes aside the pang because she knew this moment was coming, she just shouldn’t have deluded herself to how violent it would be.

Silence, dark and insurmountable stretches between them and she wonders if Bellamy feels the same, that something between them has broken.

“Well, I got nothing else,” he says at last. “I can’t back you doing this.”

“Fine,” Clarke bites out, feeling Wanheda creep up her spine and wrap her in a shroud of diamond. She cloaks herself in it tight and lets herself step off the edge of the cavern that gapes between them. “Don’t.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is molasses. Time is a gale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments!

With one exception, the Azgedan delegation leaves within the week. There are preparations to make for the upcoming marriage in the Ice Nation capitol, and after weighing the options, everyone seems to agree that only one ceremony is necessary: Arkadia doesn’t care much at all to host and celebrate their new union with Azgeda.

It’s agreed that Clarke will follow two weeks later, staying in Arkadia long enough to ensure that the caravan of goods Azgeda agreed to pay Arkadia arrives, long enough to pack up the simple life she’d created for herself and say her goodbyes. 

Echo stays behind with her, officially to escort Clarke to Azgeda once it’s time. Clarke doesn’t know her all that well, aside from what Bellamy’s told her about Echo. She knows at one point they were briefly allies in Mount Weather, and Bellamy may well owe Echo his life for her help killing Lovejoy. But whatever his gratitude may have been in that moment, it’s lost in his stories now. Echo is, in his mind, is as guilty for Gina’s death as he is.

From what Clarke had seen of her, in the few days after ALIE was destroyed and they stayed in Polis to try to arrange a now failed peace, Echo is loyal to a fault, clever and unerringly brutal. In those few, chaotic days, she’d acted as Roan’s champion twice: once, efficiently, when Sandkru objected to redrawn boundaries that both Arkadia and Azgeda benefited from; and another, more gruesome moment, when an Azgedan Old Guard stepped up to challenge Roan’s authority. 

The first had been duel, winner claims land. Echo hadn’t wasted time. The Sandkru fighter was dead within moments, a cleanly broken neck and no blood spilled. The second time had taken longer, not because the Azgedan challenger was a match for Echo, but because she chose to draw it out. It only ended when Roan had finally called enough, and Echo, face spattered in blood, ended it with the same simple efficiency she’d dealt Sandkru. 

It’s easy to see why Bellamy has such a visceral dislike of her– too many of his own fears are worn proudly by Echo. 

In Arkadia, she’s all but a ghost. Clarke knows that she’s staying in a spare room in one of the emptier wings of the Ark rubble, can sense that she’s watching her as Clarke deals with her remaining duties, but she rarely sees her. She’s not sure if Echo is giving her space out of kindness or if her self preservation instinct is strong enough to realize that she’d be an easy target for Clarke to vent her anger on.

Either way, as much as Echo is a ghost in appearance, Clarke feels like one in spirit. Arkadia is back to it’s usual self, ever busy with building, farming, expanding, refining. Children dart in and amongst the legs of working adults; there’s laughter and late nights where the small group that’s fashioned twangy string instruments strums away in the bar; the guard duty that had swelled in number during the skirmishes is back to it’s more relaxed rotations with one exception: Bellamy is demoted.

They haven’t spoken since their fight, but she hears about it from Raven, who reports he handled it about as well as to be expected, meaning he bristled through the blistering talking to he’d been given, promptly told the council exactly what they could do with their demotion, politics and authority; was threatened with further suspension and took that surprisingly well by simply leaving the meeting without being dismissed.

“But what actually happened?” Raven asks, sitting in her salvaged desk chair like a throne. “Why did he get demoted to begin with?”

“He didn’t tell you?” Clarke asks, heart in her mouth.

“Well, the little I got was when I had to take him home from the bar where planted his ass until he fell off the stool,” Raven says dryly. “But your name came up a few times.”

She doesn’t know how to do it elegantly, her fight with Bellamy still pissing her off, still making her heart beat right in her mouth, so she goes for simple. “The peace treaty relies on my marrying Roan for peace.”

To her credit, Raven hides her blanche well. “Ho-ly shit,” she drawls, which is somehow a little comforting. 

“Bellamy tried to object to it,” Clarke says, anger nipping her words short. “So: demotion.”

“Sound about right,” Raven says, rubbing the back of her neck. “Assholes. But what, Roan’s had the hots for you since Polis and decided this was the perfect opportunity to act on it?”

Clarke gives her a half shrug. “It’s less about me, more about Wanheda.”

“Ah.”

It’s a relief to tell Raven. Their views of acceptable sacrifice haven’t always aligned, but she understands better than maybe anyone else what Clarke’s willing to do to herself to help them all to to survive. 

“I can see why Bellamy wouldn’t be happy,” Raven says and Clarke doesn’t answer that.

They haven’t spoken since the day the council accepted the peace treaty, and their silence stretches across days. Clarke sometimes catches sight of him in the mess hall, across camp, leaning against the rail at the top of the guard tower. Once they run into each other, coming too fast around a corner, and Bellamy reaches out on instinct as if to steady her, but whips his hand away as he realizes it’s her. They stare at each other for what must be only a moment but feels too long, too big, so much crashing inside Clarke that she couldn’t have spoken even if she wanted to. Then, he steps around her, and he’s gone.

Rage still licks and dances under skin, a low simmer during the day that keeps her hands busy, her feet moving. At least she can pull Wanheda close around her, cool, detached, marble that wears the anger with ease and blocks everything that lies beneath it.

It’s worse at night. At night, there’s no one to play the part for, and her anger roars to life and pounds in her chest, each heart beat riddling her with the memory of their fight. It keeps her up and no matter how much she tries to think of other things, it slips back into her thoughts until she catches herself in the spiral of reliving it over and over again: Bellamy’s eyes snapping, mouth cruel, the past they hurled at each other, all projected on the cold darkness of her wall.

She has nothing to distract herself with at night, no one to slip their arm around her, no one to rumble at her to settle down, to touch her until she can’t think anymore. Even if it wouldn’t have thrown all the work she put into the treaty into precarious risk, she wouldn’t have sought anyone out. Being touched by someone who didn’t know all the ways she liked to be soothed, loved, would only fuel that growing feeling under the anger; the one that, in the few moments that the anger ebbs, threatens to compress her lungs and choke her out until the anger whips back up and she can breathe again.

She tries to calm herself with her own fingers, the rhythm she’s known since forever: simple, basic, efficient. But instead of calm and a few moments of pleasure, it only stings her eyes with tears and makes her gulp helplessly for air until she relents and lies still and rigid in the dark.

Time feels like molasses. Time feels like a gale. 

She feels buffeted forward without an anchor, towards something that she only knows in facts: Azgeda, Roan, a role she’ll play to save her people, children. She tries to imagine the realities of it to keep her mind busy while she’s doing final inventories at the clinic or starting to organize her room, but she can’t picture any of it. Her mind draws a blank, her limbs get a little stiff, and Clarke gives up after a while.

Why bother when she’ll live it soon enough?

The details of the treaty are supposedly confidential but it’s not long before it’s clear that they’ve leaked. She doesn’t hear anything, per se, but it’s not hard to put two and two together when she walks into the mess hall and an odd hush ripples out from those nearest to her. She lets the silence and the stares that no one tries all that hard to hide roll off her skin. Wanheda is made of marble; they don’t touch her.

It’s harder with her mom.

Abby doesn’t protest the marriage, she voted for it after all, and Clarke is glad that she doesn’t. But Abby does start coming by Clarke’s room in the early evenings, or joining her at the clinic, and that feels weird too. It’s not that she doesn’t love her mom or want to see her, but they’ve grown to inhabit almost two different worlds in Arkadia. They see each other more as equals now than mother and daughter, and Abby’s sudden reinvestment in intense doses of mothering sends Clarke further into herself.

“Sweetheart, are you sure you don’t want to take these?” Abby asks her, sorting through the small pile of clothes that Clarke has put aside to be redistributed.

Clarke glances up at the mittens that Abby’s holding up, one starting to unravel at the tip of the ring finger.

“There’ll be mittens in Azgeda,” Clarke says, and looks back down at the to-do list she’s made for herself. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Abby says, and then picks up a fuschia sweater. “What about this? This is such a pretty color on you.”

“It’s alright, Mom. I don’t think Roan will really care one way or another what colors look good on me.”

Abby puts down the sweater slowly and then slides onto the bed next to Clarke, like she did when Clarke was little. Back then, Clarke used to tuck herself under her mom’s arm and they’d cuddle and read a book together. Back then, the world felt safe and navigable from the shelter of her mom’s arm. Now it just makes Clarke feel like her skin is too big.

“You know,” Abby says gently, like she wants to let Clarke in on a secret. “When I was matched with your father, I really didn’t think I would ever like him. I just sort of figured that he and I would be partners in raising you and that would be it.”

Something sparks faintly in the back of Clarke’s mind. “Did you ever love someone else beside Dad?”

“Oh, a school girl crush maybe,” Abby says with a little laugh. “It was a silly little thing.”

The spark fades in it’s glow and Clarke nods. “Oh.”

“You want to know when I realized I loved your dad?”

“When you were pregnant with me?” Clarke asks. She’s heard this story before. 

“That’s right. You know, your father had the worst mouth before you were born.”

“What, dad?” Clarke asks, genuinely surprised. “My dad?”

“Your dad,” Abby confirms. “Especially when he got excited or worked up about something. But the second I got pregnant, he refused to swear in front of me. I think he took to heart that you could hear him.”

Clarke smiles a little faintly at the thought of her dad. He feels so distant now.

“He used to talk to you, and to me. That’s the first time he really opened up to me, on the pretense of talking to you. And he’d read aloud to you,” Abby says. “Engineering manuals. He so wanted you to follow in his footsteps. He once described how to fix an intercom system to you. I was so bored,” Abby says and laughs a little. “But it made me realize what kind of man he was, that he loved you so much already and did so much to provide for both of us.

“I think,” Abby continues, squeezing Clarke’s shoulder gently. “That you’re going to be a great mom, Clarke. I have no doubt about that. And I think Roan will do right by you. Remember that you’re allowed to enjoy yourself. You deserve to, given everything you’ve done for us.”

It’s said out of kindness, but it doesn’t make her feel any better.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Of course sweetheart. Here, I have something for you.” She pulls off her necklace with the wedding ring, and then slides her own off her finger. She presses them both into Clarke’s hands.

“I don’t know what the Azgedan tradition is for marriage rites, but I want you to have these. He’s marrying you as much as you’re marrying him, and, I know it may not be right away, but when you think he’s earned it, I want you to be able to show the world in away that means something to you that he’s yours.”

The rings are both warm in Clarke’s hands and she reflexively curls her fingers around them. It’s a nice gesture, but somehow holding her mom and dad’s rings make that feeling that underrides the anger pulse just a little more strongly. 

Abby strokes her hair, not pressing Clarke to reply, which she appreciates it.

“Do you want to come have dinner with me and Marcus tonight? We thought we’d just eat in our rooms.”

“No, that’s ok.” 

She knows the invitation comes from her mom seeking to spend as much time as she can with her, make up for their differences that they both figured they’d have the rest of their lifetimes to sort out, but Clarke can’t. She just can’t. She knows that dinner will be forced joviality littered with awkward pauses in which she’ll have to come up with something to say, play the part that she needs to so that everyone can feel better about this peace treaty.

“I’m just going to grab a quick dinner from the mess hall and head back to the clinic. I’m doing some training with my replacement.” She still has drawings up, she realizes with an odd lurch. She should start taking them down. There’s only a few days left in Arkadia, there’s no point in leaving them up now.

“Oh that girl, Lena?” Abby asks.

“Yeah, she had some free time tonight, so why not?”

It’s not true, but it gives Clarke an excuse to be alone in the clinic, away from eyes and whispers. She sits with her back to where she and Bellamy stood just a week and a half ago, refusing to acknowledge the memory of it.

\--

She dreams about the woods. 

Not the woods around Arkadia. Those are safe and familiar, filled with dappled sunlight and worn down foot trails from hunting parties and people headed out to the fields. She’s taken countless walks in them, alone or with Bellamy, sometimes with Niylah or on the rare occasion, Raven. 

The woods she dreams about are the inky dark night of her past. She dreams of the ominous, foreboding shapes of trees, the cold, hard ground, and curling up to sleep in between roots, half hoping she just wouldn’t wake up again in the morning. She dreams of the cat scratches and sore feet and stiff fingers and matted hair and the aching, aching, aching pain in her chest that never seemed to lessen no matter how much else hurt. 

That was the most important thing the woods taught her. How to deal with that ache, how to pretend it wasn’t there. She could be angry, or she could be numb.

\--

Time is a gale. Time is molasses.

The first convoy of goods arrives from Azgeda. There’s warm, furred clothing; packets and packets of cured meat; well made farm tools and seeds for next year’s sowing season; grain and corn and even rice to make it through the winter. Clarke helps out with the unloading of the supplies. Bellamy, to no surprise, is nowhere to be seen. 

She works until everything is inventoried and packed away and realizes with a jolt there’s more than she bargained for. The Azgedan advisors had insisted they could only send a third of the goods at a time. This is more than that, more than can be attributed to error.

“Hey,” she says, catching one of the Azgedan curriours by the arm. The man glares down at her until he seems to realize who she is and then drops his eyes, stoops a little as if to make the way he towers above her less noticeable. It would be funny if Clarke were in any mood to laugh. 

“Wanheda.”

“How many more shipments are you scheduled to deliver to Arkadia?”

“Two, Wanheda. As promised.”

“Same amount?”

“Same amount.”

She doesn’t know what to do with that information: it gives her the same vague unease that she felt back in Azgeda. Something’s happening that she can’t track: it’s all too neat. But there’s nothing to complain about- her priority was and is Arkadia, and they’re benefiting from this. There’s nothing she can do without jeopardizing everything at this point.

Her room is barren when she returns to it. The clothes she’s taking are folded neatly on her desk, next to the rolled up drawings she’s decided to keep, her sketchpad and charcoal kit. It’s early yet, but she’s left her desk drawers to empty last, knowing she’d need something to do tonight to fill the time. 

She starts in on the first drawer, filled with random papers and notes she’s kept over the last few years. Nothing all that important now, but she skims each page simply to keep her mind busy. She’s gotten through nearly half the papers when there’s a knock at the door.

It’s Echo. She’s wearing a dark grey hoodie and khakis, somehow remarkable on the woman Clarke has only ever seen in full armor, yet makes her look like any Arkadian in a crowd. She’s good at her job, Clarke has to give her that.

“Hello,” Echo murmurs and holds out a saddle bag, a rich, dark leather perfumed, somehow with jasmine. “Roan sent this for you: a gift to make our ride easier.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says, accepting the bag. It’s heavy, sturdy, well made. Clarke looks down in it in her hands and has the weird feeling of floating outside her body. “What time do we leave tomorrow.”

“Early,” Echo says. “Sunrise, if you can stand it. I want to be in Azgeda territory by nightall.”

Clarke can trace the route in her mind, not from the last time she rode out, not from her trip back, but from years ago, with her hands tied and dirty cloth pulled too tight in her mouth. 

“I can do that,” Clarke says. “The stables?”

“The stables.” Echo nods and then, to Clarke’s surprise, reaches out and places her hand gently on Clarke’s forearm. “You’ll like Azgeda. It won’t be like Arkadia.”

She can’t have missed Clarke’s growing isolation over the past few weeks, and Clarke’s sure she means it kindly, but she’s the last person Clarke can stand pity from right now.

“I’ve been told I’d like a lot of places,” she says impassively. “Thanks for this.”

“Thank my King,” Echo answers with an odd note of melancholy. “Rest up.”

Her things only fill half the saddle bag. She packs the rings her mom gave her last, tucked away safe in a rolled scrap of fabric, secured by her father’s watch. And there it is: Clarke kom Skaikru, packed neatly away. Even her anger seems to have gone. All she really feels now is numb.

Back to the desk drawers, then. Slow breaths. Time is molasses, time is a gale. Another knock disturbs her.

“Yeah?”

“What the hell, Clarke?” Raven asks, opening the door. “I can only assume you were going to come find me to say goodbye?”

She wasn’t. She doesn’t have goodbyes in her, but she manages a smile for Raven’s sake. “Of course I was, once I finished this up.”

“You want to go to the bar for a drink? One last Arkadian moonshine shot?”

There are too many people at the bar. She likes the quiet, she likes that she doesn’t have to feel anything here. 

“I have an early start,” Clarke says. “You’ll have to send some to me in Azgeda.”

“I can definitely do that,” Raven says, but her smile wavers and after a moment's hesitation she shuts the door and cross the room to sit on Clarke’s bed. “I’ll just keep you company here for a little while.”

She shrugs off her jacket and swings her feet, looking around the room. “Wow,” she says softly. “You’re really going.”

“I am,” Clarke says. The top drawer is empty. On to the second. A few pieces of scrap metal, who knows why; a pine cone, still a little sticky to the touch; a pretty rock from the bottom of a river bed all contribute to the detritus she’s hidden away. 

“Arkadia’s really not going to be the same without you.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but when she looks down at the half full saddle bag, it rings hollow. Nothing much will be lost when she leaves with that saddle bag tomorrow. “Arkadia will survive though,” Clarke says. “That’s what matters, right?”

Raven is quiet for a long a moment. The silence feels a little unbearable and Clarke holds up one of the pieces of scrap metal. “Can you use this?”

“Sure. Hey, you know that I’m really going to miss you, don’t you?”

Wanheda is curled too protectively around her for Clarke to really know what that means, but she musters up a smile. “I’ll miss you too.”

“And Bellamy?”

Anger. Dark anger. It bubbles and pops tearing through the numbness. “Of course,” Clarke manages. “And Bellamy.”

“Are you going to say goodbye to him?”

“He doesn’t want to see me,” she says cooly. 

“Clarke, come on, he’s-”

“He told me he wouldn’t back me in this treaty,” Clarke says. “And this treaty is all there is now.”

“This treaty doesn’t erase the history you two have.” Raven frowns at her. “I think you two deserve to say goodbye. If you want, I can go and talk to him.”

“No. It shouldn’t have to be your job to hold his hand through this. He can come to terms with it or not, it’s up to him.” She’s surprised she can sit still with how quickly her anger washed over her again. That thing, that big uncomfortable, choking thing that sits under her anger thrashes in her chest. She doesn’t want to feel it. She lets herself steep in the anger, works to keep it hot to keep the other feeling at bay.

“Clarke,” Raven says gently after a moment. “You know you’re not the first person Bellamy’s lost to Azgeda.”

Clarke closes her eyes, a lash of guilt licking her. “I know. Gina.” 

Clarke’s seen just one picture of her, captured on one of the few still-working holo-pads while she had been gone. It’s a spontaneous photo, maybe Harper or Monroe, had called out their names just before it was taken: Raven, sitting at the counter of the bar, lifting a cup gleefully, Bellamy leaning on the other side of a stool from her, half a smirk touching his mouth, and from behind the bar, Gina beaming between them, a bar towel tossed over one shoulder and her curls tumbling from a messy bun. 

Bellamy never talked much about her. She wandered through a few stories of his, cracked a witty joke here and over there beat Raven in a chugging contest, but how she was in the quiet hours that were shared just between her and Bellamy, Clarke has no idea. It wasn’t hers to have, and she’d never asked for it. 

“This isn’t like that though,” Clarke grits out. “I’m still alive. And we’re not... “ She doesn’t know exactly why she can’t finish that sentence but it stalls in her mouth and refuses to come out.

“Aren’t you in all the ways that count?”

Clarke turns to look at Raven, her voice shaking too much when she says, “What do you want me to do, Raven? He doesn’t want to see me and I can’t change that. He’s making me choose between Arkadia and him, between our survival and him. I mean it, please. What do you want me to do?”

She hates that she sounds like she’s begging. She shakes her head to discourage the sudden prickly at the back of her eyes and the closing of her throat.

“Hey, hey, I’m sorry,” Raven says, half rising and holding out a hand as if to pacify Clarke. She’s grateful Raven doesn’t actually come over to her. She needs the safety of their distance to keep a grip on herself. 

“I’m not trying to make you defend yourself,” Raven continues. “I think you made the smart call, and I know it wasn’t an easy one. But neither of you deserve to be alone in this, and I think Bellamy maybe _could_ use a little hand-holding this time around. 

“You know I’m not usually one for the _let’s all just kumbaya together_ fireside crap: that was Finn’s thing, never mine. But he was right about some things, and I wish all the time that he and I had a chance to resolve things, like really resolve things. You and Bellamy owe it to each other to work it out. At the very least, neither of you deserves to be alone in this.”

The overwhelming ache presses up against her windpipe and squeezes her lungs again. She manages a shallow breath and pushes it back, keeping it at bay. She pulls Wanheda’s cloak tighter around her and prays it’ll hold despite the way it seems to be fraying at the very seams.

“Just… just don’t let him do something stupid,” she finally manages. “We don’t need another Charles Pike.”

Raven closes her eyes for a long moment, and when she opens them again, she looks older than she has before, older than her twenty-one years. 

“Ok. I get it. And don’t worry, I won’t let that happen.” She pushes herself up and cross the room to lay a gentle hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “I know how much is on the line here.”

“Thank you,” Clarke murmurs and covers Raven’s hand in her own. “I know we haven’t always been close but-”

“No, none of that crap,” Raven says. “Plain and simple, I’m going to miss you, Clarke. I owe you my life twenty times over, most of us here do. If you ever need anything, you send someone to get me, ok? I’ll be there.”

“Thank you,” Clarke says again, fervent. She stands up and pulls Raven into a hug. “Thank you, I’ll miss you too.”

Raven doesn’t stay much longer than that. She slips Clarke a smooth, polished disk, just the size of her palm, that has _Arkadia_ stamped on it, and then she’s gone. Clarke turns the medallion over and over in her palm. She feels over full: pressure in her throat, her stomach, her chest, her head, legs, feet and arms. She needs to lie down, needs to just sleep and let everything ebb away again. 

Raven’s left her jacket on her bed. She should give it back to her. She’s halfway to the door when Raven knocks again: the quick, single rap of knuckles. 

“Here,” she says opening the door. “Your-” 

It’s not Raven standing in the hallway. 

It’s Bellamy.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Each day is an agony, each day is a heartbeat.

“Did you ever know your dad?”

The question surprises Bellamy out of his half doze, not quite asleep, but thoughts lost to the warm sun and drone of cicadas, the cool water up to his calves. Earth is actually peaceful for the first time in the near year that they’ve been on the ground, and it’s a strange and wonderful thing to become accustomed to. He looks up at Clarke where she’s leaning back on her hands, arms bare in the summer heat, her foot swirling jetties against his leg. 

“Uh, supposedly,” Bellamy says, rubbing a hand across his face. “Mom had a picture of me with him.”

“Baby Bellamy,” Clarke muses and squints down at him with a smile, the sunshine glinting off the drops of water that still cling to her neck from her swim. “I bet you were a cute kid.”

“I’m still cute.”

Clarke snorts. “That is the last thing I would describe you as.” 

Something sizzles between them as she holds his gaze. Bellamy wants to run his fingers up her arm, tracing droplet trails in reverse. He wonders if she would let him or bat away his hand with some playful, annoying quip. 

Sometimes he still can’t believe he’s into Clarke.

“But you don’t remember him?” Clarke asks after a moment of the late summer bugs and birdsong and bubbling creek water the only sound between them.

“Nah, not really,” Bellamy sighs and pushes himself up to sit. “Maybe a shadow or two of him but nothing concrete. Why?”

Clarke hums. “I was just thinking about what my dad would have thought about the ground. And then I realized that I can’t remember what he smelled like.” She looks at him and shrugs lightly. “Just made me wonder.”

“Sometimes I can’t remember my mom’s handwriting,” Bellamy admits. “Which is ridiculous, you know, because she’d leave notes for me on all the days when I got home from class and she was working her shift.” Bellamy shakes his head. “I’d help Octavia practice her reading using those notes. How do we forget these things?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe so much has happened that we don’t have room for those things anymore.”

Bellamy hums in agreement. It makes sense, given what they’ve both been through. “Sad though, that that’s the shit that we gotta lose.” 

“Well, look at it this way,” Clarke says, reaching out and touching the back of his hand. It sends goose bumps up his arm. “Just gives us all a lot of reasons to make new memories of good things.”

“Yeah,” he says, mulling that over. “Yeah, ok, I can live with that. What kind of things?”

Clarke makes an amused, thoughtful sound at that. “Well this is kind of nice,” she admits. “I like spending time with you. Like this..”

Bellamy presses back his grin and tries not to let it fan the curious, hopeful feeling that fills his chest. “Yeah. Me too.” 

“And… I don’t know. Maybe watching Arkadia grow. Maybe when we figure out how to make more to eat than just meat and berries.”

“Ever practical.”

“Well, what about for you?”

“Well,” Bellamy considers, watching the way the sunlight casts shivering patches on Clarke’s feet through the water. “I think having things with Octavia get easier would be nice. Maybe I’ll learn to ride-“

“Practical. The rover won’t last forever.”

“Hey now, easy on her,” Bellamy protests. “And that’s only if you teach me how.”

“Me?”

“Who else?”

It makes Clarke smile, a real one that lights up her face, radiant and so vivid. Bellamy looks away because he’s gotten caught staring before. “And maybe if I ever got a chance to have kids, I think that’d be nice. Lots of opportunities there for good memories.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” She cocks her head to look at him, shielding her eyes from the sun sparkling off the water. 

Bellamy hums. “Like the normal things you do with kids. Teach them to sew, like my mom did for me and O. Read to them before bed. Oh, do that thing where you prop them up on your feet and make them fly.” He can’t help but grin at Clarke when she chuckles at his enthusiasm. “Little things, you know?”

Clarke smiles at him. “I can see you being good at that.”

Bellamy nudges her foot under water. “What about you? You ever think about that?”

“What? You having kids?” 

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Ok, Clarke.”

She’s quiet for a long moment and then shrugs. “Truth?”

“I’m asking, aren’t I?”

“Not really, no,” she says softly. “I’m not sure it’s something I want with… I don’t know, everything.” She cuts her eyes at him, eyes just a touch veiled. “Selfish, huh?”

He shrugs, considering that. “I don’t think so. You can’t help what you don’t want. And down here, you actually get a choice.”

A tension eases in Clarke’s shoulders and she lifts her face up at the sun. The light falls gently on the curve of her lips, the apples of her cheeks and her high brow. She’s so beautiful it almost hurts. “Thanks, Bellamy.”

“Hey,” he gruffs, shrugging. “For what, right?”

She leans toward him and gently bumps her shoulder against his. “I’ll be busy hanging out with yours anyway. Knowing you, I bet they’ll be a handful.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bellamy can’t help but laugh. 

Clarke just lifts her eyebrows cryptically and Bellamy sighs and flops back down to avoid thinking about how much he wants to kiss her. 

“Fine. Keep your secrets,” he tells her, dropping an arm over his eyes so he doesn’t fixate on the sun-kissed skin on her back, the fine, nearly white-blonde hair that dusts the dip of her back.

“Back to sleep?”

“For now.”

She dribbles cool water on his forearm until he whacks her hand away and she laughs. “Sleep well.”

He’s got it bad for Clarke Griffin, that’s for sure, and it’s crazy that alone is not the weirdest thing that’s happened on Earth. Maybe someday he’ll do something about it.

\--

Bellamy opens his eyes not on sunshine and stream and Clarke, but on the dark of his ceiling. Clarke’s soft laughter still echoes in his ears, and he can’t figure out out why his heart is pounding, why that memory feels like it’s ripped a hole in his chest. 

Then it comes back, a rush of the last few days, ugly and dark and brutal, and he pounds his fist into his mattress, over and over, until his arm aches and it still doesn’t help. Fuck. _Fuck._

It’s been three days and the world hasn’t stopped tilting under his feet, the headache behind his eyes hasn’t lessened and nothing yet has helped. He presses his fingers to the hinge of his jaw and tries to will it to unclench. 

Everything is tight, tight, tight. Everything spirals and stretches and slips from him so that he’s left desperately grasping for something he didn’t even know he was about to lose. 

He wants Clarke back in his bed. He doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to shake her, demand answers, insist she just _listen_ to him, or if because he wants to kiss her, beg her to stay, stroke his fingers down her face and remind her that she’s just one person and Arkadia is too big of burden for her to bear alone. 

But she won’t listen to him. She won’t. Bellamy grits his teeth and commits himself to the headache. That’s easier than letting Clarke’s anger glimmer behind his eyes again.

\--

“Obviously,” Counselor Shunji says, peering at Bellamy over the stack of papers he keeps shuffling importantly in front of him. “Your conduct was unbefitting of your rank and put Arkadia in jeopardy. Given the sensitive nature of the meeting in which you chose to make such a spectacle of yourself, this Council is left with few options.”

Bellamy shifts his weight, hands clasped behind his back. He doesn’t even get the full council on this, just Jaha, Kane, Shunji and Ryker. Kane is leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, trying to catch Bellamy’s eye but he refuses to look at him. Something dark and violent moves in the back of his mind and he focuses instead on the shaft of natural light that cuts across the wall behind the four Councilors. Fuck Kane. Fuck him, he voted for that sham of a marriage just like everyone else. 

“One day, Bellamy,” Jaha says with a note of fatherly disappointment. “I do hope we can see you exert some modicum of self control.”

“Until we reach that day, however,” Shunji continues, clearly enjoying the gravitas the moment affords him. “It seems that we promoted you too soon. You will report to Jones for your shift schedule.”

“Oh that’s fucking inspired.” Bellamy can’t help himself because it’s too far. “You can demote me, but Jones?”

“Jones has proven himself to be a loyal, responsible soldier,” Ryker says. “Perhaps something you can learn from.”

“With all due respect, Jones’ a fucking hack that is more than happy to lick ass when it serves him, but I can guaran-fucking-tee you that man has an power complex that’ll result in more corporal punishment and a break down of loyalty in your ranks.”

“Second-Lieutenant Blake,” Shunji drawls, blue eyes narrowing. “That kind of language has no place in the Council Chamber.”

“You know,” Bellamy continues, spurred on by the lash of rank demotion that stings more than he thought it would. “I think it’s right at home. Given the fact that you are all more than happy to auction off Clarke if it serves you, by my book, there’s little I could say that’ll desecrate this place much further.”

“Now hang on, son,” Jaha protests. “No one is being sold, Clarke herself-”

“Really? You want to tell that to the shipment we have coming in from Azgeda next week?”

“Clarke arranged-”

“Clarke is one person, who, as you’ve been more than happy to point out up until now, has no formal power in Arkadia,” Bellamy grits out. “But all of you signed off on the fucking treaty, so in my book that makes you guilty of selling your own people for Azgeda’s whims and your benefit.”

“That’s enough,” Kane says. “Bellamy, if you’re not careful you’ll wind up with a longer suspension.”

“You gotta problem with the truth, Kane?” Bellamy snarls. “Why don’t you stand up and escort me to the brig this time? Or is Morales waiting outside the door again?” 

He wants to strangle them, his hands itch for it. He could, he could fucking do it. _You just kept on killing_ , Clarke echoes in his mind and Bellamy slams his fist into the wall instead. 

“Second-Lieutenant Blake-”

“Fuck you all,” Bellamy growls and then turns and stalks out of the room. He hasn’t been dismissed, but he doesn’t fucking care. Outside of the Council chamber, Arkadia continues with it’s normal bustle. The world tilts under his feet again.

His headache is back with a vengeance, and his whole body aches, like he’s been in a deep freeze, like his whole body has been shaking. He needs a drink. 

He nurses a hangover for two days after his demotion. He wishes it lasted longer, because for two days feeling sick and mad at the world can be written off as his own fault. It’s so much easier when he can blame himself, but as the hangover fades, he’s left with the cold, unrelenting reality that no one in Arkadia seems to even care about what’s happening. There’s no one he can find who will listen to him. He tries though. 

He witnessed Charles Pike do it: lure people close and sell freedom and violence entwined as one to people who needed to believe it was theirs to claim, like it was their last chance to ever get their hands on it. Pike believed he was right, that the ends justified the means. 

If Bellamy can keep Clarke from being shipped off, he’ll do whatever it takes.

But the the thing is, no one will listen to him. Not the disgruntled construction laborers, not the loners who haunt the bar, not even his new dead-shift partner seems to care: a bitter man who, Bellamy knows, supported Pike and his violent tendencies.

He doesn’t get it, it drives him crazy. How can no one care? How can no one see how fucked up this whole situation is? 

And Clarke- he can hardly think about Clarke. He can’t think about the count down that’s he’s got going in his head. Each day is an agony, each day is hardly longer than a heartbeat. Time is running out and Clarke seems to walk Arkadia like a ghost. 

He catches sight of her here and there: headed to her shift at the clinic, lingering outside of the mess hall like she’s working herself up to go in, sometimes just standing still in a ray of sunlight, face turned upward like she’s trying to soak in as much as she can. The sight of her always sends a jolt through him, like someone is squeezing his heart, like someone’s kicked him in the stomach. It hurts to look at her from a distance, but somehow worse not to see her, like maybe she’s already disappeared from Arkadia and he isn’t any the wiser. That thought keeps him up at night.

He misses her like a limb, and she’s not even gone yet. But he can’t bring himself to seek her out. Not after the time he came around a corner too fast, too angry and she took him by surprise. In that flash of a moment, he’d felt a wash of relief, a _thank god: there she is_ , and he’d reached out to steady her, but her expression had stopped him cold.

She was barely Clarke. Her face was a mask of granite. Her mouth too still, cheeks too pale, eyes veiled and distant, like somehow she really was already gone and all that was left of her was a cold vessel that once held all the beautiful, frustrating, wonderful complexities of Clarke.

He couldn’t touch her like that, not after the last time he’d been that close to her she’d been flushed with rage and so vibrant. He couldn’t risk touching her and knowing just how much he’d already lost of her. She’d looked up at him and for a moment something broke through, all too fast for him to decipher, and then it was like a gate closed and she looked at him with distant, absent eyes. He couldn’t bare to linger longer. 

He can still feel her, that last night they spent together. The soft press of her body against his back, her warmth and urgency when she rolled into him in bed, the way her mouth was so soft, the way she curled close to him and let him- god- _god_. He should have kissed her sooner that night. He should have stayed down on her longer, licked and sucked and loved on her until she had shivered over the edge. He should have woken up when she slipped from his bed in the morning. He should have pressed for more details, he should have stayed up with her all night. He should have done so much more before now. 

It makes him frantic. Losing Clarke is unimaginable. It makes something monstrous and terrifying gape open in his chest, jagged and ragged and unfillable so that Bellamy has to cling with all he’s got to the parts in his life that still make sense. He can’t lose her again. He can’t. 

\--

Each day is an agony, each day is a heartbeat.

As much as he grasps desperately to what he has, he can’t stop the march of time. The Azgedan convoy arrives, carts bulging with goods and Bellamy is sick behind an condemned wing of the Ark wreckage. He can understand war, he can take torture and death and loss, but he can’t accept the idea that each item in that caravan is somehow equivalent to a piece of Clarke’s future, traded away for theirs. 

He doesn’t realize he’s not alone until a light hand touches his back. He whips around to find Octavia watching him, surprise visible on her face for a moment before it falls back to neutral again. “Bad night, big brother?”

“Nothing that simple, O.”

Octavia reaches into her pocket and produces a small jar which she uncaps and holds out to Bellamy. It has a sharp, spicy smell and she shakes it at him a little when he hesitates. “Ginger,” she prompts. “It’ll help.”

Bellamy takes a piece and slips it under his tongue. The tang helps with the bitter bile that lingers in his mouth. Octavia’s dark eyes sweep over him and she frowns. “I take it that the shipment that came in means Clarke worked something out with Azgeda. So why do you look like shit?”

His world spins off kilter and he has to reach out to steady himself on cold metal of the Ark. “Woah, woah, woah,” Octavia catches his weight. “Bellamy, what’s going on?”

“It’s for Clarke,” he chokes. “The Council’s marrying her off to Roan to get us peace.”

“Ok,” Octavia says quietly, steadying him on his feet. “Ok, come on.”

He’s not sure how she navigates them back to his room, or where she produces the strong smelling mug of tea that she presses into his hands, but she sits with him for a long time, his body shaking too much to speak, tension and anger and deep, compounding loss all snaking loose from his control. The tea helps, it’s bitter enough that it brings him back to himself. It tastes like wood and dirt and leaves, but he helps the roiling pressure ease until he finally has a hold on himself again.

“Ok, tell me everything,” Octavia says with a gentleness that Bellamy’s forgotten that she has. He does, he tells her about Clarke’s return, and Echo; about being dragged from the Council chambers and his bitter, destructive fight with Clarke; his demotion and their silence for the past weeks. Octavia listens through it all, her face still and blank, but her eyes stay searching his. 

“So that’s it,” Bellamy says, rubbing hand over his face. “Raven says Clarke leaves tomorrow. And there’s nothing I can do.”

Octavia is silent for a moment, cocking her head at him. “What do you mean by ‘do’?”

“I mean: stop it. I mean: keep her from having to give up everything on some misguided belief that she’s responsible for Arkadia’s future. She doesn’t have to do any of this.”

“But she’s already told you she’s going to,” Octavia says slowly. “Don’t you think maybe something you could do would be find a way to support her in that?”

“She’s doing it because it’s what she’s been conditioned to do since she was seventeen years old, O. She thinks she’s responsible for all of Arkadia when she doesn’t have to be.”

Octavia takes a slow breath and then reaches out and lays her fingers on Bellamy’s arm. It’s more than she’s touched him in the last two and a half years for anything other than necessity. “That could be true. But maybe Clarke knows that she’s been conditioned for that and she’s still choosing to do this. Have you asked her?”

“No,” Bellamy grits out. Her words make his heart clench and everything threatens to shake loose all over again. “I can’t… I can’t…”

“I’m going to give you some advice,” Octavia says, suddenly urgent, fingers curling around his wrist with an intensity so that he looks up at her. “I don’t think you’ll like it, but I think you need it.

“Since we’ve been little, Bellamy, everything we learned was about control. Not just us, everyone on the Ark, but you and me especially. Control was safety, right? If we knew the guard shifts, if you and mom could eat just a little bit less, if I could keep from crying or shouting when I was upset… we had to control everything. And when we lost control, it all went to shit. 

“I get why you do this, but Bellamy, every time you feel out of control now, you lash out. You punish everyone around you trying to find some way to control the situation again, because that’s what we were taught to do. But life doesn’t work like that on the ground, big brother. It can’t. And you’re only going to keep hurting yourself if you try to make it.” 

Her words ring in his ears and Bellamy feels his stomach lurch. “Well I’ve already fucking lost everything so what’s the point?”

“Everything?” Octavia repeats, recoiling. “You haven’t lost everything, you still have me.”

“O, you _hate_ me.” It tumbles out of him before he can stop himself, all the pain and grief that surrounds his relationship with his little sister suddenly sharp and present. “You told me so yourself. We barely speak anymore, I never know where you are on a given day. All I can do is hope you’ll turn up once in a while. I don’t have you. Not at all.”

“If you would stop reveling in your self pity for thirty seconds and just _listen_ -” Octavia growls. “You haven’t lost me, Bell. I know it’s not like when we were kids, but I’m still here. You’re the only reason I still come back to Arkadia, you know that right? If you don’t then-”

She stops abruptly and shakes her head, a surprising glimmer of tears in her dark, snapping eyes that take him by surprise. Bellamy’s mouth falls open, but he finds there’s nothing good to say, nothing that will make this moment better, so he says nothing. Octavia takes a breath and nods, trying to calm herself back down. The two of them, they’re a pair. Blake anger runs hot, but for once, they’re trying.

“Listen, Lincoln died because of what you were part of with Pike, Bell. I do hate you a little bit. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you a lot more. And mostly I just hate this place. These people here, they’re all fucked up. They’re also responsible for Lincoln’s death, but they’ll never acknowledge it. You, at least, can. And that’s why I come back. Because maybe it has to be smaller doses, but I still want you in my life.

“You haven’t lost me, and you don’t have to lose Clarke. Not entirely.”

He doesn’t know what to do with that. Everything he’s believed about them for the past two years feels turned on his head. But she’s right. His beautiful, dangerous, always clever little sister is right: control is his safety net. Control has always kept him safe. But all the best moments on the ground, all the little things that slipped through the cracks and surprised him, that he welcomed, even if warily or hesitantly, came when he stopped trying to grip every aspect of his life so tightly. 

No wonder his body hurts. No wonder his headache hasn’t ebbed. He’s been braced in every possible way against an impending reality that he can’t stop and can’t change: he’s just chosen to torch everything instead. 

“I think I have, though,” Bellamy chokes. “I think I really fucked up, Octavia.”

Octavia’s shoulders drop and he sees a glimmer of sadness in her eyes. “Oh, Bell,” she murmurs and scoots back in close. She slides a tentative arm around his shoulders and then wraps the other around him too and pulls him into a hug. 

“Fuck,” Bellamy whispers, covering his face in his hands. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Octavia gently strokes a hand over Bellamy’s head, leans her temple against his. “You haven’t lost everything,” she repeats softly. “The thing I’ve noticed about you and Clarke, Bell, is that you two somehow always find a way back to each other.”

“I don’t think we can this time,” Bellamy husks, trying to control the way his throat threatens to close on grief and panic. 

Octavia hums. “Well. You still have tonight. Why not try?”

Fear grips him, squeezing his spine, spreading across the back of his skull. “What if I just make it worse?”

“Can it get much worse than it is now?”

Bellamy closes his eyes. He sees Clarke’s stoney, masked face, lost to Wanheda’s expressionless pallor. But he can also still hear the sob that escaped her back in the clinic, her shaking, shallow breath. He can still feel the way her fingers curled around his wrist when he touched her face. God, he _misses_ her.

“No. No it probably can’t.”

“So go.”

Arkadia is lit by lanterns and electric light both in the dark winter evening. He doesn’t know what time it is, but there are still plenty of people in the bar. He doesn’t know where Clarke may be, but he makes unerringly for her room without thinking about it, the path ingrained deep. If she’s not there, well, then he’ll wait. 

As he turns the corner to her hallway, he catches Raven headed in the opposite direction. Her heads down, shoulders hunched, limp more pronounced than it usually is. It’s not hard to guess where she’s just come from.

His heart feels rabid in his chest. What if she slams the door in his face? What if she won’t even open the door to him? He can’t bring himself to knock the way he usually does, four soft, quick raps that Clarke always, somehow, recognized as his. He knocks once instead and the door opens almost instantly.

“Here, your-” she cuts short as she realizes it’s him. There’s something wild and desperate in her eyes, but her face, god, her face somehow remains inpassive.

“Hey,” Bellamy croaks, swallowing back everything that wants to come rushing out. “You got a minute to talk?”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments! I'm sorry I've been slow to respond- I've been traveling and now sick post traveling so going to play catch up in the next few days!

He thinks for a moment that she’s going to close the door on him, leave him standing in the dim blue-lit hallway, the chill seeping into him and that will be it. That deep, stomach twisting fear will be right: he’s destroyed everything. 

Clarke doesn’t answer him, just turns back into the room and lays Raven’s coat over the padded back of the armchair. She leaves the door open, though, and Bellamy takes that as all the invitation he’s going to get. He follows her in and quietly closes the door behind him. Clarke’s bare walls are a shock. They’ve always been so full of life– drawings of their friends past and present; little bundles of herbs strung together that were half decorative, half functional; the varying stubs of candles that she’d developed a habit of commandeering after she came back from Polis. 

With those details stripped away, this room isn’t hers. It’s like the room he couldn’t escape after his mom was floated and Octavia locked up: a shell of a place, echoing with ghosts. 

Here, the ghosts haunt what’s left: the bed where just a few weeks ago he pulled her leg up over his hip and she gasped against his mouth as he found that perfect angle she loved when they fucked slow and lazy; the armchair where she’d passed off countless books to him, where he’d sat as they had countless conversations deep into the night; the desk chair where she’d plant Bellamy to trim his hair, her fingers methodical and slow. The onslaught leaves him frozen by the door, too vivid and visceral to touch.

It’s that much worse when Clarke turns around and her eyes are once against distant and shuttered. She doesn’t speak, just looks at him, blank and stoney.

“You’re all packed, huh?” It’s the only thing he can bring himself to say. Everything else, ‘I’m sorry,’ and, ‘I miss you’, and even things he still can’t yet name for himself feel all at once trite and too big for this moment. 

“I leave early tomorrow,” she says, voice too even. 

“Yeah, I… I know,” Bellamy says. His tongue feels too big in his mouth, his throat too dry, his heart beating too fast. All his residual anger, pain and fear mix together in him and blurs even his own understanding of what he wants.

What do you say at the end? What do you say when your lungs stop working and something so simple as breathing is lost?

“What did you want to talk about?” Clarke asks, voice too cool, too distant. “Like I said, early start.”

“I wanted to– to–” She watches him struggle, face statuesque. The single desk light casts her face in chilly relief, no shadows to hide her hides but Bellamy knows that look. He knows who he’s talking to.

“Fuck, Clarke,” Bellamy grunts. “Can we just… can we just talk like normal? I can’t do this when you look like that.”

“Look like what?”

“Like that,” Bellamy says with a jerking gesture at her face. “Like Wanheda.”

Her hand flies up involuntarily, fingers pressing dimples into her cheek as if checking that it’s still her own face. She seems to catch herself and lowers her hand slowly. 

“I am Wanheda, Bellamy.”

“No, come on, don’t say that,” Bellamy says, fighting back the clawed panic that curls around his spine. “Not all of you.”

Clarke is quiet for a moment. Her gaze drops to a leather saddle bag by her desk and then she looks back up at him. “This is all I’ve got, Bellamy.” she says, voice even. “If you have something you want to say, then say it.”

“Ok, ok,” Bellamy takes a slow breath, trying to keep his tightening chest from choking off his breathing. “Look, this can’t be how things end between us, Clarke. I’m still not okay with what’s happening here, I don’t know if I ever will be, but I don’t want to leave tomorrow and have us never speak again.”

Clarke’s peal laughter surprises them both and it’s a clear effort on her face to quiet it. She looks at him with those wild eyes again.

“What do you think we’re going to talk about?” She bites out. “This thing that you told me you could never support me in? That’s going to be my whole life, Bellamy. How are we supposed to talk when I know everything I say to you, you disapprove of and blame me for? What kind of friendship are we going to have based on that?”

“I don’t blame you, I blame the Council but that’s besides the point-”

“It has everything to do with the point.”

“Fuck,” Bellamy snarls, more at himself than at Clarke. “I didn’t come here to fight, I don’t want to do that right now. I want to make things right. Can’t we at least try?”

Clarke’s arms move, crossing over her chest. He’s not sure she’s conscious of it- it’s such an un-Clarke-like gesture. “We’ve disagreed before. Lots of times. That’s part of leading right? I don’t see why know we have to work through something just because you decide we need to.”

Her voice is cold, chilling. Bellamy gapes at her, thrown. 

“Wait, hold on,” He says, clearing his throat, give himself a moment to adjust, to breathe. “Do you not want to work this out?”

Clarke’s face does something odd, warping like it’s caught between two different expressions. “Given our last go round, maybe not.” She looks like she’s about to shake apart. He’s never seen her look like this before. “Maybe it’s better if we just leave things as they are.”

“That’s bullshit,” Bellamy whispers, knows his voice is hoarse. “This isn’t how things are between us. I know crossed a line. I crossed a lot of lines. I’m so sorry, Clarke. I panicked and I know it’s not an excuse but I- if you’d tell me what I can do to make it right, I’ll do it.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Bellamy says fervently. 

“You can leave.”

It shocks them both to silence and Bellamy stares at her, sure he’s not heard her right. Clarke face seems to fracture, and for a second he thinks he sees her: horrified and terrified and so alone. He can’t help a step toward her. “Clarke. You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t!” She gasps stumbling back violently. “What is it this time? Are you going to handcuff me again? Drug me?”

“What?” he chokes. “No I wouldn’t-”

“You wouldn’t?” Clarke grits out. “You have. I won’t let you jeopardize this, Bellamy. I know better now.”

“No,” Bellamy husks, holding up his hands. “No. Clarke you’re my best friend. I...”

He can’t finish that thought, because there’s nothing to say. She was his best friend back then too, and he betrayed her trust with that impulsive decision to handcuff her to the desk. He’d thought it was behind them, that they’d built something more than that, but like everything else that they buried back on that beach two years ago, he never actually made it right.

“I’m so sorry,” is all he can say. “Fuck. I really fucked us up, didn’t I?”

Clarke stares at him from the corner she’s backed herself into, eyes nearly feral, breath coming short and fast. Her arms wrap around herself, fingers sinking into her thin shirt like she’s trying to pull it closer around her. Like she’s trying to keep herself contained. This is part of her he doesn’t know: not his funny, clever, steely friend Clarke. Not Wanheda, cold, calculating and distant. Maybe this is that part of her that kept her alive, those three months on her own, through cold, hunger, exposure and isolation. 

He’s too late. Too late to make things right, too late to reach her. He wants to ask her to tell him again to leave, to ask her if she’s sure, but he’s not that cruel. He’s already driven her to this point, and Octavia’s right: this is out of his control now. The kindest thing he can do, the best thing he can do as her friend, is listen to her. 

“Ok, Clarke, ok,” he murmurs, lifting his hands and retreating. “I hear you. I’m leaving. Just…” There’s so much more he wants to say, but at this point it’d be for him, not for her. “Just take care of yourself, ok?”

It’s a shitty way to say goodbye. A shitty way to wrap up three years of something that’s so much more than a friendship. It aches in his bones, his very core, to know that everything they’ve had is simply gone: destroyed with her sacrificial play and his terror and anger. 

Time comes to him in stills. His hand is on the door, the door is half open, he’s walking out of Clarke’s life when a low, animal-like sound stops him. He turns back to find Clarke doubled over. She’s shaking violently and Bellamy freezes not sure if she’s sick or hurt, until he realizes she’s shaking with emotion- sobs wracking her body, hitting her so hard that they threaten to throw her from her feet, and that turns his stomach to ice. She makes that noise again: a low, helpless keen, buried in her own hands. 

The sudden overwhelming of her grief hits him, and he’s across the room before he knows it. There’s no way he can leave her like that. He’s not that strong. He sinks down in front of her, hands hovering. 

“Clarke, please,” he begs. “Let me-”

“No,” Clarke moans, reaching blindly for him. She’s pale under the red stain of her emotion, and it’s like some sort of veil has torn open- leaving her raw and exposed. “No, no, no.”

She can barely catch her breath with how hard she’s crying, her gasps rough and short in her throat. She grips his collar with shaking fingers, arms caught in a rigor like she doesn’t know if she wants to pull him close or push him away. 

“No what?” Bellamy rasps. “What is it, Clarke?” 

“I need to go,” Clarke chokes. “I’m going to Azgeda. I need to. I need to go.” Her words are raw, and he can’t tell if she’s trying to convince him or herself. 

“I know, Clarke,” he says desperately hands hovering. He wants so badly to touch her. “I know you do.”

She keens again, a lonely, wild sound that he feels in his gut. He doesn’t know what to do, he’s never seen this side of her before. 

“What do I do?” he begs her. “How can I help?”

“You shouldn’t have come,” she chokes, still vicious in her anguish. “I was ready to go and then you come here and I– I–” She’s crying too hard to finish and Bellamy catches her as her legs give out. There’s little he can do, but ease them to the floor as Clarke shakes against his chest, her tears muffled against his shoulder. 

“Oh, don’t–” Clarke whimpers as he wraps his arms around her, but she clings to him, holding too tight for him to disentangle. He can’t bear to wrench himself away from her so he just holds her, thumb brushing along her shoulder blade, trying to hold his own grief in check. 

Clarke cries for a long time, the type of crying that only comes after it’s been denied for far too long. Bellamy knows this kind of grief, it’s hit several times in his life, and to witness it in Clarke nearly undoes him. Her whole body shakes as she curls in on herself even as she clutches him like he’s her only lifeline back. There’s nothing Bellamy can do but ride it out with her, swaying a little like he used to do when Octavia was inconsolable with fear, soothing her as much as he can with his hands on her back, his cheek on the top of her head. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, not knowing what else he can possible say. “I’m so sorry, Clarke.”

Eventually, Clarke’s sobs slowly ebb to shudders, and in time to soft, breathy gasps. She holds on to him through out it, her body braced and tense, as if even still she’s fighting her own grief. Bellamy waits, hands slow on her back, rubbing her upper back as slowly and soothingly as he can. She’s quiet for so long he wonders if she’s exhausted herself to the point of unconsciousness, but then she stirs against him. 

“Why is nothing ever easy with you?” She sounds so tired, voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. 

“I don’t know.”

“You should have gone.” Her fingers flex where she’s curled them into his shirt and he feels her heart rate tick up, like the very suggestion of it scares her just as much as it scares him. But she’s right: he wasn’t supposed to be here for her tears, for the weakness that came after she’d pushed herself beyond her limit. He’s made it that much harder on her now. 

“I know,” is all he manages.

“God,” Clarke grunts. “I need more than that to go on if you want to talk, Bellamy.” She slowly pushes herself up to take her own weight again, but she doesn’t move from where he’s cradled her between his legs. She winces and touches her forehead, and Bellamy wonders at the headache she must have. 

“Do you actually want to talk?” He asks tentatively. “I’ll go if you want me to.”

She gives him a look that’s caught somewhere between a glare and disbelief, her eyes swollen but heartbreakingly blue. “What I wanted was just to be mad at you. You know how much easier that was?”

“It’s easier than feeling everything else,” Bellamy says and shifts to reach up to grab Clarke’s canteen off her bed, pressing the cold steel into her hands. “And it works until it doesn’t.”

“God, how do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“I’m so fucking mad at you, but you’re still the only person who gets how I feel.” 

“I’m mad at you too,” Bellamy tells her. “And I’m fucking terrified I’m going to lose you.”

She’s quiet for a moment, taking a sip of water, fiddling with the lid. “You know, I wish you weren’t,” she finally says. “This would be so much easier if you were just mad.”

“Clarke, come on,” Bellamy says, “You really think losing you and everything we have doesn’t terrify me?”

“No,” Clarke says, closing her eyes. “But the only way I’ve been able to face this marriage is by convincing myself that everything between us is just convenience. That maybe with a little time, this won’t matter as much.”

It stings and Bellamy has to take a slow breath to keep from bristling. “And? Do you believe it yet?”

“God, I don’t know,” Clarke says scrubbing the heel of her palm across her face. “I think I should. If you really believe what you said about what happened with Lexa, then I should. You’re my best friend, but if that’s really how you see what happened back then, I need to know that. ”

“Yeah, I know,” Bellamy says. “I know you loved her. I know you always will, to some degree. And I still don’t agree with some of the things– well a lot of things– that happened back in Polis, but I also know you did a lot to keep us safe. I just wish you’d included me in more of it, trusted me with more of it.”

“We didn’t have the time, then,” Clarke says. “And then when we did-” she trails off. When they did, Bellamy had been too mad to hear her out. 

“It’s a bad pattern for us,” Bellamy says, dragging a hand through his hair. “I wish you had told me about this sooner too.”

Clarke drops her eyes and nods, mouth a thin line. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you?” Bellamy asks softly. “Why didn’t you tell me when you came back, Clarke?”

Her eyes are damp again when she looks up at him. “I was going to, I wanted to. And then I– I saw you and I couldn’t.” Her voice breaks and she has to take a slow breath. Her fingers find the loose canvas of his pants and twitch it between her thumb and forefinger. Bellamy has to swallow the lump in his own throat, watching her work through her emotion.

“I should have,” she says after a moment. “But then I just wanted so badly to have one last night where I could pretend that this wasn’t happening.” Her eyes find his and hold his gaze. “I’m sorry, it was really selfish but I feel so safe around you. I really needed that. And I wanted… well, that doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe it does,” Bellamy prompts her. The consistent prickle of his anger is slowly starting to ease, being able to hear Clarke out.

Clarke can’t look at him anymore. “I wanted to give you something nice,” she murmurs. “And I know that sounds like an excuse but I just… I wanted a nice way to end what we had.”

Bellamy lets out a slow breath. His chest aches. “But I didn’t know it was the end.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “I know. I told you that last part of my reasoning didn’t matter.”

“No, it does,” he says, reaching out to touch her knee. “It helps me understand. I just wish you actually told me. I knew something was up, but finding out at the Council meeting…” he trails off and shakes his head. “That fucking sucked.”

“Yeah. I know it did, and it wasn’t how I wanted it to happen. I’m sorry, Bellamy. Really, I am. If I could go back and change it, I would.”

He nods and takes a slow breath, fighting back the grief that’s seeping in through the edges of his fading anger. “Thanks. Honestly, I don’t think it would have really changed much. Knowing me, I’d probably have still lost my shit, probably started something worse than an unsuccessful brawl in a Council meeting.”

Clarke’s lips actually do twitch at that and Bellamy can’t help his own chuckle. God, it’s not funny, but they’re both so exhausted that it kind of is. “It doesn’t excuse what I said to you though.”

“No,” Clarke agrees, ruffling a hand through her hair. “That was pretty awful.”

“I know how you felt about Lexa,” Bellamy says quietly. “I’m sorry I threw that in your face. Octavia read me the riot act about how I have issues with feeling out of control. It’s easier for me to go on the offense than–”

“Admit you’re terrified?” Clarke fills in dryly. 

“Yeah,” Bellamy sighs. “That. Like you said, it’s not an excuse. And you were right, I never could admit that Mount Weather fucked me up. I still don’t know if I really can. It’s something i need to work on, and I will. I’m sorry I took it out on you. I’m sorry that left you feeling alone. That’s never what I wanted.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “For what it’s worth, I meant what I said back in your room: you’re the best person I know. I can’t imagine anyone better, even when you piss me off.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, looking away, because looking right at her is too much. “Even though I think you’re infuriating a good quarter of the time, there’s no one like you, Clarke. No one compares to you.”

Clarke just shakes her head, visibly swallowing something back. They sit in silence for a while, Bellamy’s not sure how long. There are tears in Clarke’s eyes again but she’s working on blinking them away and Bellamy has to swipe the heel of his palm across his cheek to keep it dry. 

“You still mad?” Bellamy finally asks her when she’s taken a few long, slow breaths.

“No, not really. Just sad. Are you?”

“Not at you, no.”

“I can live with that,” she says and gives him a watery little smile. “You know, I’m terrified of losing you too.”

“You won’t,” he whispers hoarsely. “Not if you don’t want to. I want you in my life however I can have you, however you’ll let me. We’ll be a little farther away, but you’ll always have me, Clarke.”

“You’ll have me too,” she says. “Can I–” she lifts an arm and Bellamy reaches out for her, draws her in so that he can wrap her up in a hug right there on the floor. Clarke tucks her face into his neck and squeezes him tight for a long time. 

They’re slow to pull apart, and Bellamy doesn’t want to stop touching her. He knows nothing can happen between them tonight, even as he longs to pull her close and try to help her forget what tomorrow holds, that part of their relationship isn’t possible anymore. He can’t resist capturing her hand and cradling it between his own. He just wants to stay close to her for a little longer, ingrain the feeling of her skin, the soft familiar smell of her into his memory so he can keep her close even she’s gone. Clarke lets him keep her hand and just sits quietly with him, her thumb twitching down against his fingers, half stroking, half just touching. 

“Bellamy,” Clarke says after their silence stretches. 

“Hm?”

“I… There’s something you should know. I think you were right about Jasper- I don’t think his death was an accident.”

Bellamy’s blood shivers cold. “What?”

She shakes her head, frowning down at their hands. “I could be wrong. I don’t really have much to go on, but there’s something going on. You know how Azgeda refused the messenger sent before me and said they didn’t want a treaty?”

He nods. 

“Well, when I met with them, it was me they wanted, right from the start. It was clear they would only accept any grounds of peae through this marriage, like it was something they’d thought about before. And the shipment we got today? There’s more than what we bargained for, especially with two more coming in. I don’t know what it means, I don’t know if it’s connected, but I think-”

“Something’s off,” Bellamy says, fear prickling his neck again. 

“Yeah. I don’t know what it means.” She looks at him, brow furrowed like she’s thinking. “But whatever it is, it’s something here and in Azgeda.”

“Like the extra goods is paying someone here off?”

“I don’t know, maybe?” Clarke sighs. 

“You know,” Bellamy says slowly, mulling it over. “I still can’t work out what Jasper was doing out at the boundary line anyway. He rarely leaves camp. You think maybe...”

They stare at each other for a moment, trying to puzzle it out in silence. Clarke sighs and rubs her face after a little while.

“But on the other hand, no one actually wanted me to go to Azgeda. Without anything more to work with, we can’t know.”

Bellamy shakes his head, trying to compartmentalize the flare of anger and fear that rides his veins. “And know one here’s gonna care: who’s going to complain about extra supplies?”

“I know,” Clarke considers him and ruffles a hand through her hair. “Maybe it’s nothing after all.”

“It’s always something down here,” Bellamy says. “I don’t know like it, Clarke. I mean, if you are right, whatever it is, it’s not finished. It can’t be. And that means you aren’t safe either. Especially not in Azgeda.”

She shrugs a little helplessly. “I did the best I could to make sure they wouldn’t have an easy way to kill or get rid of me. That’s all I can do for now. I’ll just have to keep my guard up.”

“Clarke,” Bellamy breathes. “That’s exactly what you need: someone there on your side.”

“Yeah, but who?”

“Me.”

“What?” Her breath catches as she stares at him. 

“I’m serious. Roan has a King’s Guard. You’re about to be Queen of Azgeda, you need the same. And no fucking way is it going to be someone you don’t know. Not with everything going on. It’s going to be me.”

“Bellamy, that’s too much,” she whispers. 

“Why? What’s to say I can’t come with you?”

“Well, nothing in the treaty. But you hate Azgeda.”

“Yeah,” he grimaces, he looks down at her palm between his cupped hands and digs his thumbs into the muscle of it. “I do. Doesn’t mean I won’t come with you.”

Clarke’s face flickers again, an emotion there and gone too fast for Bellamy to read right. 

“Bellamy,” she whispers. “This treaty is so Arkadia can be left in peace to grow, so everyone can have the things they want, including you. You want to be with your friends, with Octavia. You want a family. What kind of life are you going to have in Azgeda compared to that?”

“You know,” he says. “I’ll see Octavia as much in Azgeda as I do here- maybe more, actually, if they let her in. And who knows, maybe there’s some white-face-paint hating girl over there who likes guns more than swords. Maybe she and I will hit it off.”

It sparks a ghost of a smile on Clarke’s lips but it flickers away quickly and she shakes her head. “I can’t ask it of you.”

“Clarke, it’s no more than you’re giving up. There’s nothing you can say that’ll change my mind.” Octavia’s warning rings in his head and he has to check himself. He can’t force himself on Clarke in Azgeda if she doesn’t want him there, if he’d make what she has to do harder by being close by. God knows it’ll be hard enough already. “Unless… do you want someone else to go instead?”

Clarke closes her eyes and he watches relief, grief and something else he can’t name play across her face. 

“Of course there’s no one else I want to come with me,” she admits. “I want it to be you. But what if I’m wrong and there’s no connection, no bigger plan? There’s too much for you to give up for just a suspicion.”

“It’s not, Clarke. Hey, look at me,” he says, pressing his thumbs into the center of her palm. “All those other things you listed? All those plans, they had you in them, one way or another. You matter more to me than how much I hate Azgeda or where I’m going to build that little house, or even if I have a family or not. Clarke, you matter the most to me.”

Clarke’s crying again but she’s smiling through her tears. “Bellamy-”

“And if nothing else,” Bellamy soldiers on. He doesn’t want to hear what she wants to say in return to that. No matter what it is, it’ll hurt too much. “You’re gonna need some help looking after all those kids you’re gonna have, right?”

Clarke it surprises a small, short laugh out of Clarke and she swipes tears off of her cheeks. “You think?”

“I’ve got no doubt they’re going to be a handful,” Bellamy says and Clarke hiccups another little laugh. “So, what do you say?”

“Ok,” she murmurs.

“Yeah? I’m coming with you?”

“Yes. You’re coming with me, Bellamy.”


End file.
